Your name
Marie Wengler
Place of birth
Denmark
Place where you live now
Copenhagen
3 words to describe you
curious, persistent, rebellious
Why do you take pictures?
To quote Ansel Adams, I do not take pictures, I make pictures. I stage my pictures meticulously down to the smallest detail - both before, during and after the pictures are taken. It gives me the opportunity to conceptualise my pictures; to give them a common aesthetic expression and voice. Giving my pictures a voice is absolutely central to my work. Alongside my artist career, I am also a researcher, and my research and artistic practices are deeply intertwined: both in my art and in my research, I investigate how societal norms influence our behaviour and how we, in turn, influence societal norms. This interaction between research and art gives me the opportunity to think and speak across the two fields: both to be able to dive deep to uncover complex matters but also to be able to transform these complex matters into simple, visual concepts. Specifically, I am interested in exploring the limits of what we in today’s society perceive as “normality” by showing what is considered “deviant” – be it physically, mentally or sexually – to, thereby, question how the perception of normality is (re-)constructed over time. An examination, which is very often performed from a female gaze, since the female body and mind has been – and still is – subject to pervasive societal normalisation practices that have limited and continue to limit women's opportunities in life and ways of behaving. It is a topic that is deeply personal to me and a topic I explore from different angles in my research – and it is thus the main driving force for me to take pictures, developing and executing new artistic concepts. A female-gaze on deviance is also the focus of my ongoing series REJECTED (shown in this interview). The series deals with the stigma and taboo of what is today perceived as the abnormal or deviant female body. In the meeting between repulsion and fascination, a new aesthetic emerges that helps beautify and de-taboo this body. Like Cindy Sherman and other brilliant artists before me, I use myself as the model for each of my photographs in REJECTED, but by deliberately staging, disguising and transforming myself in every picture, I am negating the concept of the classical self-portrait. None of the images in REJECTED is of me, and yet I am present in the manner in which I have imagined them, dressed them, lit them, composed them, photographed them and, of course, posed for them. I thus use myself in the service of a wider argument; to humanise and present broader societal issues related to female bodily deviation and the associated definition of female bodily normality.
Where do you get your inspiration?
Everywhere. Literally. I am exploratory by nature. I go to exhibitions, I immerse myself in books, I read up on new research or I conduct research myself, and I talk to people about their personal life story and worldview. Take REJECTED, for instance. The inspiration for the series came from a personal experience at university a few years back where a fellow student got alopecia and gradually lost all the hair on her body. I watched her battle against the disease, and people’s reactions towards her. I had conversations with her about the experience, and, therefore, also gained insight into how her sudden bodily deviation - the lack of hair - changed her self-perception and way of behaving in public. I thus became aware of the importance of bodily normality and deviation on a whole new level, which in the years that followed - when I came across other cases of bodily deviation - made me consider the subject artistically. I knew that I wanted to bring focus on the topic from the perspective of these women, yet I did not want to present them from a documentary point of new, where one typically would portray them as individual cases or “victims”. Instead, I wanted to remove the role of the “victim”. To do so, I decided to stage the portraits in formal Renaissance poses against a vintage backdrop – but instead of humbly concealing bodily deviance as would be the case in self-portraits from the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth century, the portraits should show what is usually concealed, radiating self-confidence to create a visual collision that makes the viewer question the “normal” female body.
Who are your influences?
That’s difficult to say. I have so many people who, in different ways, have influenced me and still influence me to this day. Some artists include Gregory Crewdson, Evelyn Bencicova, Nadia Lee Cohen, Mikael Kvium, Sally Mann, Marina Abramović, Petrina Hicks, Juno Calypso, Tony Matelli, Romaine Brooks, Rineke Dijkstra, Barbara Kruger, Catherine Opie, Meret Oppenheim, Orlan, Patricia Piccinini, Jenny Saville, Joan Semmel, Cindy Sherman, Jo Spence, Marta Zgierska, Romina Ressia, Lin Yung Cheng, Arvida Byström and Gillian Wearing, to mention a few. Moreover, I find inspiration in different scholars like Michel Foucault, Erving Goffman, Zygmunt Bauman, Simone de Beauvoir, Judith Butler, and Dorte Marie Søndergaard, besides inspiration in experimental modern choreography, in particular pieces by Pina Bausch.
What determines the subject matter you choose?
Art found me when I was young and has not let go of me since. In the beginning, it functioned as a personal therapeutic refuge, when I, as a young woman, went through a difficult time. I experienced what involuntary deviation from social norms feels like. The art allowed me to process my emotions, which I otherwise had a hard time articulating. However, over the years, art has, for me, gradually transformed into a channel through which I can reflect on broader societal issues related to perceptions of normality and deviation. The way I conceptualise deviation has, therefore, also changed over the years. From associating deviation with a personal feeling of shame and anxiety - something to be hidden - my art is now about showing deviation, free from shame or anxiety. The theme of deviation has thus determined and continues to determine the subject matter for my art. It is a subject matter that has grown out of personal experiences with deviance and over the years has become defining for my artistic practice when I look at my art in retrospect.
What impact would you like your art to have?
I consider myself a reformer. My art - as well as my research - must create reflection. It may disrupt and resent; it may fascinate and cause debate. I strive for my art to be remembered; to make a lasting impression on the viewer. It must never be pleasant, boring or unmemorable.
What artwork do you never get bored with?
There are so many works I could name that I love and return to every now and then. It would be an exhaustive list if I was to mention all of the works I never get bored with. Art that moves me and stays with me, is what I prefer. Whether it is the visual or conceptual part of a piece - or a combination - that triggers this feeling in me, art should make me reflect. Otherwise it is not art, in my perspective.
Is there anything you want to add?
If I have to add anything, it would be how important it is to continuously have the discussion about how under-represented women are in art history - and still are. In 1971, Linda Nochlin wrote the ground-breaking essay "Why have there been no great women artists?", published in Artnews. Here, Nochlin draws attention to the limitations of art history when it comes to women. Treated as objects rather than subjects, women have been left out of art historical narratives for centuries, and it is only now, in the last few decades, that we see that (deceased) women are beginning to have a voice in art (history) - even though the representation of art by (especially living) women in museums and exhibitions is still extremely limited. And when one finally highlights women in exhibitions, there is a tendency to use the uniform label “female artists” rather than just artists. On the one hand, this label creates a necessary visibility for women in art, but it also risks stigmatising and backlashing against women in art, as we end up in a (in)visibility paradox: we now achieve visibility as women, but not necessarily as professional artists, detached from our gender.
