September 3 – November 7 2021
ARIEL – FEMINISMS IN THE AESTHETICS, Copenhagen

A rudimentary and automated payment system minds its own business, while some rustic wooden doors display both a reeling revolving door-effect and an unbound swaying storage space. However, the exhibition also shows glimpses of a narrative inhabited by lone femme-knight figures, and shopping stick folks, as well as haunting costumes, putting together phenomena of compound time, arbitrarily jumping between acts through different textures and stagings. As a historian-dreamer of costume, Heilmann accesses repressed memories of costume-as-technology, while a ferocious production apparatus and a non-coherent economic system constantly lurk in the background of the conversation.

A Webshop through the Ages is linked to Heilmann’s research project, “Pre-reform Webshop” on shopaholism, sustainability ideas, consumption pains, and a particular worshipping of the past that, like a double-edged sword, expresses both escapism and futurism.

The installation at ARIEL is a fabulating, physical delusion of the pre-reformed webshop. Where the libidinal economy, the secret texture of values, lifestyles, and desires offers itself as another form of texture through Heilmann’s imagery, asking what parts of the present we want to replicate and carry on with, and what futures we long for.

The exhibition is realized with support from Kulturministeriets Pulje til Kunstnerisk Udviklingsvirksomhed.

Photos by Malle Madsen and Hannah Heilmann

The project and exhibition is generously supported by:

Bikubenfonden
Statens Kunstfond
København Kommune, Rådet for Visuel Kunst
MARI KANTER arkitekter
Decor Farver
faustlight
Flügger farver
STARK
Kvindernes Bygning