CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 11/14/2015

Barbara Kasten: The Diazotypes

Featured image is reproduced from Barbara Kasten: The Diazotypes, published to accompany Stages, Kasten's current retrospective at the Graham Foundation. In an interview with Kasten, curator Alex Klein comments, "I don't want to retroactively claim a politics for your work, but there is no doubt to the assertiveness of the diazotype images." Kasten responds, "Well, there is a synergy between the figure and the chair, which can be seen as symbolic of the manipulations that are imposed on women to fit into confirming roles in society; they present another way of looking at the female nude, in defiance of social mores. In both the sculptures and the prints, the body's relationship to designed form implies a rejection of prevailing societal structures even by simply making visible the practical difficulty of a body becoming one with a chair and the contortions that need to take place to accomplish this!"