Brigitte Dunkel

Brigitte Dunkels' art projects are often installation-based and may include performative elements: the term “cross-media” describes her practice quite well. The use of a wide range of media is mandatory: sculptural objects/assemblages, photographic and print works are created, as are textile objects, video works, paintings, drawings, collages, etc., in order to set up an often lively setting. Regardless of the type, scope, or occasion of a planned work, the creation of spaces is at the center of her interest, and the inclusion of public space can also be essential.

"My name is Brigitte Dunkel, and I am a visual artist. I work across different media with a wide variety of materials and use them to create installations. But I also often organize events and performances in various forms. I also do lecture performances, because I often work with a very strong context that I develop in advance.

I also take photographs. But I would never see myself as a photographer in that sense, because I work much more with the processes that come after. I'm always interested in how something looks on a particular background, or how I can then detach it from the photographic paper.

So I rarely work in a documentary style, but it does happen. But for me, it's about another level: what you can see in it.

The fact that I do cross-media work relates both to the media as such and to the themes. I have very, very different blocks of work—I work timelessly.""

“Now we come to my large work table. There are two works laid out on it that I made in connection with a large project on the Black Dahlia. This is a—in quotation marks—”famous femicide" from the 1940s, and I did a large work on it at the artothek in Cologne. The installation is called Black Dahlia - “B.D. *** MEMORIAL FOR *** E.S.” I created a narrative about Elizabeth Short that focuses not on her as a victim, but on the person she could have been.

Right in front of me is a work from a series called “Heels and Gloves.” If we start on the left side, we see only one shoe, in a very bright pink against a very dark red background. And the gloves are made of suede in ivory white.

To my own eye, there is more to it than what is depicted here. There are no hands in the pictures, but you think about them. When you look deep into the picture, you can imagine that there is a person somewhere.

I just wanted the focus to be on the fact that someone's life had been taken. And I wanted to show that in a way—which is a strategy I use in my work in general—that doesn't bring you down. I wanted it to still be beautiful."

"When things look beautiful, they can be irritating at first. There's a connection to the book I've just made. TABLESCAPES was an installation at the Kunstverein Leverkusen
Schloss Morsbroich, and this is now the exhibition catalog for it.

When you first hold it in your hands, the book appears to be a coffee table book. It has a pale pink cover with very specific typography. But when you open it, other things come to light. That's a good key to my work or my way of working."

Artist Info

Brigitte Dunkel

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