Susanne Roewer
Ahead of our inaugural exhibition, She Performs (London Gallery West, June 2018), we invited four of the participating artists - Pauline Batista, Yvonne Feng, Susanne Roewer and Jocelyn McGregor - to speak to our curators about their practice, and how gender, performance, and the body inform their work...
Artist Susanne Roewer spoke to our curator, Lynn Seraina Battaglia via email.
LSB: As a participating artist, what does She Performs mean to you?
SR: We live in times of an increasing number of 100 percent women shows to examine and somehow compensate the long-term under-recognition of female artists. She Performs refers to that topic but by combining the fact that female artists have been in the job all the time (she performs already) and a common term of mostly male automotive talk (a good car performs) all that gets an intelligent light footed drive. Up and out to new horizons!
LSB: As an artist, as a woman, how do you perform ‘yourself’?
SR: I think there is still a big gap between intention and recognition, be it in the personal, the market or the art world. So – even in my ‘most authentic’ moments – my performance is a dynamic transaction between triggering action and receptive reaction.
LSB: How does ‘the body’ inform your work?
SR: In sculpture the very first connection between body and work is an elemental one – in both directions. But this has nothing to do with gender, a male sculptor acts in the same field of possibilities and limitations as a female or transgender person. For my body of work in particular ‘the body’ is defining the playground or the arena for content and discourse – as shown in the glass part of my work Arena.
Arena, 2017 / Photo: Gerhard Haug, Berlin
“Female artists have been in the job all the time (she performs already)”
