“I’m thinking about Justin Bieber’s forehead lines—the calculated crease he manicures in every Instagram upload. It’s a symbol of experience, a positive masculine trait that 12-year-olds idly mimic and the most obvious sign of aging. Yet for women, it’s a sign to be cosmetically embellished, removed, and pumped with Botox…” Amalia Ulman explains at the opening night of her latest solo exhibition at London’s Evelyn Yard, The Destruction of Experience. Ulman’s diverse artistic practice spans painting, poetry, essays, sculpture, video, Instagram uploads, a confessional Facebook presence, and Skype lectures. For her latest show, it’s an immersive installation enveloping sound, scent, sculpture, and delicate wall-based works that offer a techno-social mediation on time, body clocks, and the body as a perishable asset.
“The human body I’m talking about, of course, is that of a woman,” Ulman explains, and there’s no mistaking the calendars and time-charts regulating menstruation cycles, pregnancy, and surgical procedures. These installation objects apply to Ulman personally, both as a woman and as an artist who may or may not have had plastic surgery. Yet Ulman’s interest in body modification follows months of surgery after a life-changing car crash; “I’m standing on two very modified legs, and it’s fucked up... surgery is tough.” Though the delicacy of flesh becomes a personal narrative that orbits the symbology of the entire installation, Ulman is quick to tell me she isn’t squeamish, having grown up in a tattoo parlor where books on scarification were readily available reading material.
The space is like walking into a clinical waiting room, where surgery or awkward sexual health advice might be offered, punctuated by the familiar sensory aesthetics we generally associate with health care—that banal, universal graphic treatment that typifies any health-related visual material, severe lighting, and even uncomfortable chairs. The other side of the space resonates with Ulman’s previous artistic investigations, where “prettiness” remains a key aesthetic cursor, but the commentary cuts deeper. We’re guided by tiny candles, a constellation of handmade objects, embroidered pillows with religious iconography, and soft, billowing curtains that cultivate a spatial sense of serenity. “This show actually looks a lot like my first ever show in London, which wasn’t documented, and it was back when I was in my sophomore year at Central Saint Martins. I found myself going back to the the same stores to buy the same things, even the glue. It feels good to do have done this properly,” says Ulman.
It’s at the altar where the heart-shaped framed photographs of Marijn E. Dekkers shatters any zen vibe or meditative moment. He is the CEO of Bayer (a German pharmaceutical company who manufacture Yaz, Yasmin, and Minera—all names of prescribed birth control medication) that becomes the political punchline, all dressed up. “When I came across his image in my research, I thought he was perfect—he has all the visual tropes of a callous, evil CEO figure,” Ulman declared. Her soft-toned sensibility manages a firm grip on slippery themes like social deception and consumerism in relation to the female body.
Talking to Amalia about flesh, femininity, and near-death experiences made me realize how far removed my conception of her as a lived body was, as I’ve only ever encountered her performing her femininity in appearance and gesture through a steady leak of sourced images and transformative selfies that she routinely posts on various social networks. Her immersive installat
“The human body I’m talking about, of course, is that of a woman,” Ulman explains, and there’s no mistaking the calendars and time-charts regulating menstruation cycles, pregnancy, and surgical procedures. These installation objects apply to Ulman personally, both as a woman and as an artist who may or may not have had plastic surgery. Yet Ulman’s interest in body modification follows months of surgery after a life-changing car crash; “I’m standing on two very modified legs, and it’s fucked up... surgery is tough.” Though the delicacy of flesh becomes a personal narrative that orbits the symbology of the entire installation, Ulman is quick to tell me she isn’t squeamish, having grown up in a tattoo parlor where books on scarification were readily available reading material.
The space is like walking into a clinical waiting room, where surgery or awkward sexual health advice might be offered, punctuated by the familiar sensory aesthetics we generally associate with health care—that banal, universal graphic treatment that typifies any health-related visual material, severe lighting, and even uncomfortable chairs. The other side of the space resonates with Ulman’s previous artistic investigations, where “prettiness” remains a key aesthetic cursor, but the commentary cuts deeper. We’re guided by tiny candles, a constellation of handmade objects, embroidered pillows with religious iconography, and soft, billowing curtains that cultivate a spatial sense of serenity. “This show actually looks a lot like my first ever show in London, which wasn’t documented, and it was back when I was in my sophomore year at Central Saint Martins. I found myself going back to the the same stores to buy the same things, even the glue. It feels good to do have done this properly,” says Ulman.
It’s at the altar where the heart-shaped framed photographs of Marijn E. Dekkers shatters any zen vibe or meditative moment. He is the CEO of Bayer (a German pharmaceutical company who manufacture Yaz, Yasmin, and Minera—all names of prescribed birth control medication) that becomes the political punchline, all dressed up. “When I came across his image in my research, I thought he was perfect—he has all the visual tropes of a callous, evil CEO figure,” Ulman declared. Her soft-toned sensibility manages a firm grip on slippery themes like social deception and consumerism in relation to the female body.
Talking to Amalia about flesh, femininity, and near-death experiences made me realize how far removed my conception of her as a lived body was, as I’ve only ever encountered her performing her femininity in appearance and gesture through a steady leak of sourced images and transformative selfies that she routinely posts on various social networks. Her immersive installat