Martina Morger with Lukas Zerbst: Cleaning Sappho

A sculpture, smeared and marked by the weather, stands hidden behind trees and bushes in a park in St. Gallen. It is a statue of the Greek lyric poet Sappho, which was designed by the Ticino artist AdelaineMaraini-Pandiani at the end of the 19th century. Once a permanent part of the collection of the city's art museum, it was placed in the public space in the 1970s due to vandalism and soon fell into oblivion.

Martina Morger takes care of this: Equipped with a bucket and cleaning cloth, dressed in a blue work suit, she washes the poetess. With gentle but firm touches, Morger approaches Sappho and gives her herattention. Thanks in part to Lukas Zerbst's attentive camera work, a dynamic relationship develops on several levels between the sculpture and the artist in this contemplative situation. Questions about care work under given (in)visibility mechanisms and the underrepresentation of women* in public space echo in the washing of Sappho. However, this initial cleaning can only remain symbolic; a thorough restoration would require other means and interests.

Cleaning Sappho is part of the performance series Cleaning Her, in which Morger devotes herself to the neglected and weathered statues of women* in public space. This act of care serves not only as a symbolic cleaning, but also as demand to collectively change our relationship towards these sculptures.

Selected by Cornelius Ferber (HMKV)

 

Martina Morger

born 1989 / based around Liechtenstein, Eastern Switzerland & Northern Germany.

Martina Morger's artistic practice interweaves cybernetics and corporeality in situational installations and site-specific performances. Her central questions deal with individual freedom in increasingly technological lifeworlds as well as ideas of power, desire and care within a neoliberal society determined by work and performance. Martina repeatedly places a specific focus on the constructions of gender. Martina actively occupies spaces and negotiates the effects of social con- straints on our bodies through strategies of display and visualisation. In this way, she creates queer drafts of a society whose central characteristics are hybridity and fluidity and thus assert them- selves against the standardisation efforts of our present. Martina Morger studied Media and Cul- tural Studies at the University of Zurich and Media Art at the Zurich University of the Arts and Die Angewandte in Vienna before completing a Masters in Fine Arts Practice at the Glasgow School of Arts. As a co-curator of Perrrformat, she brings performance art into public spaces, and is part of several collectives and unions. In 2020, Martina was a studio fellow at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris. She is a recipientof the Manor Art Prize 2021 and recent exhibitions have included her work at Kunstmuseum St Gallen / Appenzell / Liechtenstein, CCA Glasgow, National Galleries of Scotland, Yarat CAS Baku, Cafa Art Beijing, Galerie Lovaas Projects, Suomi Art Fair and ArtFair Liste Basel. In 2019, Martina represented Liechtenstein at the 58th Venice Biennale.

 

Find out more about the artist:

Website: https://www.martinamorger.com ​​​​Instagram: @martinamorger

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More info on Cleaning Sappho & Cleaning Her :

https://decoratingdissidence.com/2019/09/29/performance-cleaning-her/

https://kunstmuseum.li/?page=31&kid=186&&lan=de

https://www.rexbern.ch/rex-box-programm/rex-box-programm-queer-perspectives 

 

Reading for the performance series on 08.03. in Düsseldorf:

https://www.kunstkommission-duesseldorf.de/aktuelles/praesentation-stadt-raum-experimente-2023/