Bibliographie
Patricia Allmer (ed.), The Traumatic Surreal. Germanophone Women Artists and Surrealism After the Second World War, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 2022.
Natascha Burger and Nicole Fritz (eds.), Birgit Jürgenssen – I am., Munich, Prestel, 2018.
Gabriele Schor and Abigail Solomon-Godeau (eds.), Birgit Jürgenssen, Ostfildern, Hatje Cantz, Vienna, Sammlung Verbund, 2009.
A myriad of eyes seem to bulge from a half-human object. This eerie, uncanny depiction of a hybrid body against a background hatched with swift, powerful lines draws on the aesthetics of Surrealism to explore depictions of womanhood. Fantasy or nightmare? Either way, the work captures something mysterious and impossible to encompass.
Birgit Jürgenssen was one of the leading lights of the 1970s Austrian feminist avant-garde, alongside VALIE EXPORT and Maria Lassnig. She worked with a wide range of media across her career, from drawing and photography to installations and performances, yet her art was constantly guided by a critique of the social and cultural mechanisms that subordinate women in a heavily patriarchal society.
Drawing bodies that gradually transform into utensils or staging herself turning into a clothing accessory, as in Ohne Titel (Improvisation), 1976 (Innsbruck, Tiroler Landesmuseum Ferdinandeum), she blurred the boundary between body and object. She wielded irony as a tool to speak out against the alienation, depersonalisation, and disappearance of women in the domestic sphere. In embodying a woman turning into an animal, as in Ohne Titel (Selbst mit Fellchen), 1974-1977 (Paris, Centre Pompidou), she also pointed the way to a more complex understanding of identity, beyond sexist stereotypes and generally accepted forms of binarity.