DIE KRUMME RIPPE WIRD GERADE
Exhibition with Typographic Animations, 2023
In order to gain a perspective on society and its norms, roles and behaviours, we use the medium of literary works. After all, what better key to the past is there than the written word in poetry?
“Treat women with leniency!
She was created from a crooked rib,
God could not make her completely straight.
If you try to bend her, she will break.”
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1819):
West–östlicher Divan. (Cotta)
According to Goethe, women, also known as “the crooked rib,” cannot be straightened, because otherwise they will “break.” This statement implies that women are inherently flawed and cannot be corrected.
In many cultures, women are considered fragile and inferior to men. We focus on well-known poets who were only too happy to proclaim their admiration for the beauty of women.
The binary gender construct is constantly being reproduced along historically and culturally modified rules and is by no means a natural given. Our social gender is a social construct and is subject to man-made ideas, expectations, and laws.
However, in today's society, gender diversity is increasingly recognized and the binary gender system is seen as an outdated model.
Despite all the reforms, society remains constitutively interwoven with the dichotomous, heteronormative order, which affects our thinking about identity and the functioning of our conception of identity.
“Beauty” is a myth and serves the function of social control. Appearance has always been a means of staging successful participation in society. It is time to redefine “beauty”!
