Ann-Sofi Sidén, Eva in Tigerdress, 1999, Photo: Ann-Sofi Sidén
 
 
The point at which reason turns against itself and into something like ordered madness is the locus of Swedish-born artist Ann-Sofi Sidén's various films and installations. In her new work being presented at the Secession, she scrutinizes an area of Europe that socially and culturally is still coming out of communist rule and, beyond that, the aftermath of the Second World War. Exposed to democratic capitalism and whatever that means in terms of making money and catching up, it is in this gap where society as a whole is seeing its women trafficked and sold as prostitutes. Border towns whose landscape has become invaded by pimps, hookers and anonymous western cars. A place where the desire for cash is so strong that everything is for sale: car parts, dope, garden trolls and women.
 
By focusing on the absurdity of everyday normality in a social context, Ann-Sofi Sidén's works often deal with the human psyche as it copes with the conflicting demands of the power structures and interdependencies prevalent observer of character, Ann-Sofi Sidén knows about inner constraints and is able to fathom those of the viewer. What the latter sees and hears can serve to remind him of his own life and the inner paradoxes that manifest themselves in the everyday world.
 
Ann-Sofi Sidén is presenting a new video work entitled "Warte mal !" which deals with "the world's oldest profession", prostitution. The artist toured the Czech Republic over the course of six months and investigated this topic in the border regions to the Federal Republic of Germany. The title "Warte mal !" is a reference to the girls who spend each night trying to lure clients with the siren call, "Wait a moment !" This could also be a call for circumspection: what was the situation here in the East in 1989 and what is it like today, ten years later?
 
The artist explores the idea of a "walk in documentary" sharing her experiences with the viewer by using video projections as "ambient surround visuals". When combined with interviews, the installation portrays the exhausted state of a transit road transformed into an extended "red light district" running through a small East European country and its small towns.
 
Her material, recorded as means of research for a planned future film, sums up the many different aspects of prostitution and the artist's own experience travelling by car through the country; along the way she encounters the police, german clients, a motel owner, his wife, the prostitutes, and late night parties with her translator and the young girls.
 

PUBLICATION

ANN-SOFI SIDÉN 32 pages, 3 b/w illustrations, 33 colored illustrations authors: Erik van der Heeg, Matthias Herrmann, Ann-Sofi Sidén Secession 1999, ISBN 3-901926-18-6 ___________________ available in the shop

 
Ann-Sofi Sidén was born in 1962 in Stockholm; she lives and works in New York and Stockholm.
Exhibitions include: P.S. 1. Studio Artists 194, P.S. 1, New York (1994); "Who Has Enlarged This Hole", 53 West 9th Street, New York (1994); "See What it Feels Like", Rooseum, Malmö; Galerie Nordenhake, Stockholm (1995); "Around Us, Inside Us", Borås Konstmuseum (1997); "Zonen der Verstörung", Steirischer Herbst (1997); Biennale in São Paulo (1998); "Nuit Blanche", Musée d'Arte Moderne de la Ville de Paris, (1998); "Apertutto", Venice Biennale (1999)
 
 
 

JOHANNA KANDL

EXHIBITION PROGRAM 1999

 
 

For further information and photographic material please contact:
 
Tamara Schwarzmayr
Secession, Association of Visual Artists Vienna Secession
Friedrichstraße 12, 1010 Vienna
Tel: +43-1-5875307-21, Fax: +43-1-5875307-34
presse@secession.at