travelling exhibition formerly shown at collectors room Berlin

The springboard for ideas behind the show is a term used to describe one of the largest bed sizes: ‘queensize’. The bed serves as a key existential site of human experience, a symbol of life and death, dreams and nightmares, birth and decay – experiences that shape our identity. In an exhibition that juxtaposes widely differing sensibilities, the selected artists present us with their own distinctive view of human existence and of what makes us uniquely ourselves: our innermost being and innermost needs, our desires and passions.
Queensize explores the alternating states of consciousness in life and follows the human life-cycle of birth, life, and death. Guided by these three phases, the display investigates the disparities between how we see ourselves and how others see us, and asks whether there really is such a thing as the specifically female view.

The first stage in life can be described as a phase of unspoiled identity that prevails directly after birth. Free from social constraints, handed-down gender roles, and social codes, this phase marks a pure form of existence, as defined by play, the absence of inadequacies, and an inherent acceptance of one’s place in the world. This is reflected by Monika Baer’s painting ‘Untitled’ (2004). In it, we see the bodiless, girlish head of a woman, emerging from nowhere, looking in an indeterminate direction, and floating on the picture plane, half-abstract, half-figurative, seemingly freed from time and space.
This initial phase is followed by the intensity of the rush of life, in which the experiences of female identity are key. Photographic works by eleven artists draw attention to how women are depicted, offering multiple perspectives on femininity. This chapter of the exhibition includes portraits by Jitka Hanzlová that show women in all facets of their personality: open, confident, shy, pensive, self-doubting, authentic, and direct – just as the sitters perceive themselves and want to appear. They are contrasted by the grotesque faces in Dawn Mellor’s paintings ‘Mia Farrow’ and ‘Julia Roberts’ (both 2010). Unsparing and brutal, these canvases reveal the ugly side of Hollywood – a world of illusion and identities constructed just as easily as they are ripped to shreds.
The third section represents death and simultaneously addresses the political dimension of female identity; individual and collective experiences and constraints seen against the backdrop of war and a male-dominated world. In her 2009 video work ‘The Experiment (Greed)’, Swedish artist Nathalie Djurberg uses her distinctive, unsettling clay figures to explore the horrors of patriarchal legitimacy and power, imposed, in this case, under the guise of faith.

https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/21371