Now laugh! – a participatory installation on sexism

Together with other FLINTA* I engaged with verbal sexism and potential responses to it in a participatory installation – embedded in photographs of plants that visualize feelings and a rebellious symbolic power, experiences are shared and passed on.

Intro

Experiences with verbal everyday sexism are the focus of the artistic-participative project "Now laugh!". In a walk-in installation, framed by silver fabric panels sewn with plant photographs, stories of these experiences become audible. The space created is intended to make room for an examination of sexism. You can listen to the stories here:
https://guidemate.com/guide/Jetzt-lach-doch-mal-Eine-partizipative-Installation-zu-Sexismus-66d854f8428c1412a890d28e


Feminist round table

As part of the project, I have also founded a feminist round table. The round table serves to exchange ideas about and empower people against sexism as well as to network artists and non-artists. Together with the participants we spent six days sewing the installation. During the round table, we also created an artist's book together with potential reactions to the sexist statements in the stories, which visitors could then add to in the exhibition.

The aim of this project is to exchange about and empower each other against sexism, to share knowledge and to bring people together.

Artistic approach

To make the feelings and conditions associated with sexist discrimination visible I decided to translate them into photographs of plants. For me it is an experimental, abstract way of expressing and visualizing feelings such as disgust, anger, aggression, wanting to push someone away, the feeling of a thousand eyes staring at you, goose bumps, a cold shiver running down your spine – but also "wanting to hide away". In some of the photographs, I inverted the colors – red, pink, purple – for me, these signal colors embody the state of alarm that our body enters when we feel threatened. By inverting the colors, the photographs look like a view through a microscope, they take on something organic, an inner life, which symbolizes the reflections that may take place inside the installation.
New stories in different languages are always welcome, I see the project as an open archive.

Exhibitions

The installation was shown at KUNSTRAUM Potsdamer Strasse in 10/2023 and at Pavillon am Milchhof in 09/2024 in Berlin, Germany.