galerie michaela stock shows VERONIKA MERKLEIN / BOOTH C6
THE FATTER THE BETTER
A weight miracle pill, an action heroine, or a beauty queen in plus size
format: Veronika Merklein's performance art is surreal, socio-political and always full of wit.
According
to Michel Foucault, the human body is not 'naturally' given, but a historical, social and cultural construct into which power
and knowledge is inscribed. And this is precisely where Veronika Merklein's art comes in. At gallery michaela stock's booth,
Merklein contextualizes her body-emphasizing, often her "hard-to-digest" art and points to social injustice.
For the past 10 years, the fat German-Austrian performance artist has been working in the field
of "body politics" and repeatedly appears as a corporeal Me-form. At the fairbooth, she will be offering a glimpse into the
daily stigmatization and discrimination of fat people through performance, installation, video, photography and texts. In
works such as the female counterpart of Bruce Willis in "Die Hard" and with her seduction with E. A. Sattler in Garden
Eden, she challenges the devaluation of fat individuals on the basis of their appearance with a large portion of self-irony.
The
scale has been a motif in Merklein's work historically. In the early days of its invention, weighing was carried out in public
spaces and evoked curiosity without ulterior motive. However, with the invention of the personal scale, this act shifted to
the private sphere in the 70s. As you will see, Merklein reclaims her steps on a scale, presents herself in caricature posing
with green salad and suckling pig, and is on a tele-shopping channel trying to sell miracle "FATLife" weight gain pills.
True
to the motto: "The fatter the better".
VITA
German artist Veronika Merklein
(b.1982) lives and works in Vienna (AT). With a focus on Performance Art, she also works with different media including food,
text, photography, object, installation, and community work. Her art orbits around essential performance topics, pop-cultural
phenomena and „the pure and brutal (inner)life of human beings“. Since 2012 Merklein uses her own body as a starting point
as she investigates body politics.
Merklein enjoyed her artistic education at the Academy of Fine
Arts Vienna and the School of Art and Design Kassel. She has presented work at Defibrillator Gallery, Chicago (US); at „Neuer
Kunstverein Wien“, Vienna (AT); at Kaskadenkondensator, Basel (CH); Fridericianum, Kassel (D); Secession, Vienna (AT); Kiasma,
Helsinki (FI); Wiener Festwochen (AT) and from time to time at home. Merklein received scholarships i.a. of the Austrian Cultural
Forum New York City, Austrian Chancellary, Austrian Federal Ministry for Education (Arts and Culture), Austrian Federal Ministry
for Science and Research, and the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna.
