Mirror Armor
Being entrapped in narcissism is like a “self-jail”. Placing the mirror armor fixtures over my nude body causes the viewer to see the pixelated and fragmented image of myself. Usually covering, hiding, pretending to be a version of myself on the outside, therefore, “good looking” seems more of decoration or in itself a type of armor suitable for public viewing. Will these mirrors of self reflection cause me to wonder who I am on a deeper level? To discover who I truly am, what I am afraid of, why I waste my life without discovering my inner self. I constantly struggle with how I can break this boundary because I want to wake from this oblivion.

Захаров, Вадим Арисович
danaë installation
Drawing from the perpetually revisited myth of Zeus and Danae, an installation by Vadim Zakharov in the Russian pavilion at the Venice Biennale 2013 used consumable objects and the sequence of architectural spaces to make manifest underlying ideas about ‘rudeness, lust, narcissism, demagoguery, falsehood, banality, and greed, cynicism, robbery, speculation, wastefulness, gluttony, seduction, envy, and stupidity.’ the impregation of danae occurs when zeus appears to her as a golden shower after she is locked in a tower to prevent the professed death of her father. gender dynamics and the poetic cycle of gestation are reconstructed spatially with a total use of the pavilion– a first in the history of the building.

The Collector
Born in Parkersburg, West Virginia and raised in Houston, Texas, Rachel Lee Hovnanian is a New York-based artist whose multidisciplinary practice explores contemporary notions of narcissism, obsession and intimacy, and society’s alienating addiction to modern technological advances and media.

Disconnect

Female narcissism obviously is a misogynistic concept. “Being a feminist is about defeating, fighting those ideas. But actually, what a lot of gender studies has been about is looking into what’s masculine, figuring out what masculinity is, and how to conform to it maybe. Feminism’s ideal is a middle class white butch. ‘Don’t do feminine things.’ This excludes so many ethnicities, and models of femininity,” says Uddenberg. Her sculptures currently on view at the 9th Berlin Biennale explicitly do not follow this doctrine. Their stylized bodies are caricatures of what a “woman” “looks like,” yet their hyper-femme physique, positioning and accessories capture something about the way we look at ourselves. They are both object and subject. They turn you on, yet they repulse you. Their agency is palpable, but their intentions are intangible. “I’m also very alienated from femininity,” says Uddenberg.