Grit Hachmeister

There are certain images that provoke us. Take, for example, the photograph of Jane Birkin, in which she stands leaning casually against a door with a cigarette in one hand and the other in her trousers—a detail that you don’t see at first glance. A groundbreaking image that was seen in the 1970s as an act of female self-emancipation. Grit Hachmeister copied the pose in 2007 and its effect is just as startling as the original. The artist has a series of such pictures in her oeuvre: people dressed in nothing but a pair of shoes engaged in various sexual practices. There’s plenty of fumbling around and coupling here—being human is a messy business. Hachmeister now presents her first monograph, a collection of drawings, self-portraits, visual narratives, and staged photographs that were produced over the last ten years and provide a showcase for the artist’s humorous, gender-critical work.