Domestic Optimism | Emma Wolf-Haugh (2020)
Video (12:08): Grazer Kunstverein’s curator in conversation with queer artist Emma Wolf-Haugh about her exhibition Domestic Optimism Act One: Modernism – A Lesbian Love Story (September to November 2020) in Graz, Austria. Video: Schubidu Quartet, 2020.
[The copyright of the video above remains with the original holder and it is used here for the purpose of education, comparison and criticism only.]
Domestic Optimism Act One: Modernism – A Lesbian Love Story
In 2020, The Grazer Kunstverein presented an work by the artist Emma Wolf-Haugh entitled Domestic Optimism Act One: Modernism – A Lesbian Love Story. This exhibition explores the intersection of colonial aesthetics, prosecutions for indecency, hysterical masculinity, crime scene photography, sexology, the production of lesbianism in modernity, and the contemporary collapse of postwar social housing. The project documents and stages forms of inscription, temporary displacements, and deviations from a “Sapphic” modernity toward the surfaces of contemporary queer homes and working-class bodies. Billboards with an image of a queer home are central the art project, presented to both in the streets and in the exhibition. In the video, queer Irish artist Emma Wolf-Haugh discusses the creation of the artworks and the appropriation of furniture by modernist queer architect and designer Eileen Gray as a part of the photographic collage shown as billboard posters.
Video still – a billboard by Emma Wolf-Haugh from Domestic Optimism.
Emma Wolf-Haugh
Emma Wolf-Haugh (born 1974) is a visual artist and educator based in Berlin and Dublin. She combines installation, performance, publishing, and collaborative workshop techniques, and is interested in redirecting attention to cultural narratives. She develops her work based on queer/feminist research into what is missing. Her practice is influenced by earlier experiences in theater and queer DIY club scenes: both spaces where spaces and spatial relationships can be generated on a temporary basis. – Creative Austria
Related Link
Trailer – Gray Matters (2016 about Eileen Gray’s life and work.