Photo by Young-jun Tak. Catch Show Me Your Selfie at Diskurs Berlin, Mitte, through Jan 11.
The ‘selfie’ in this show’s title is a misnomer: the seven-artist exhibition attempts nothing less than to explore the formation and presentation of self. Young-jun Tak, most notably, juxtaposes the lower-body attire of three wrestling sports and the chest-thumping commentary of their present champions (“It would take you at least 20 years to beat me, assuming I do not continue to develop my abilities any further,” one of them tells the artist) with the pastel-yellow shorts that first caught his current partner’s attention, thus imbuing the other groin-girders with an unexpected tenderness. Filmmaker David Krippendorff, meanwhile, transplants a Brechtian monologue into the mouth of an Arabic-speaking cleaning lady in a video installation that forces the viewer into the role first of confidant, then of perpetrator. What atrocities the audience has committed is not entirely clear, the punishment they should receive, however, unambiguous: “Kill them now, or later?” It’s not immediately apparent what unites the eight works shown here, but they successfully invite reflections on the collected absurdities we present to the world under the title of Self.
Show Me Your Selfie | Diskurs Berlin, Mitte. Through Jan 11.