ARTISTS TALKING

University of Hertfordshire Galleries presents an international touring exhibition of photography by Margareta Kern. 'Clothes for Living and Dying' brings together two interrelated projects, exploring the relationship of clothing to social, cultural and gendered constructions of identity.

'Graduation Dresses' is an ongoing project consisting of a series of photographs Kern takes of the young women, who have recently graduated from the secondary schools in Banja Luka, Bosnia and Herzegovina. Their dresses, made by the artist’s mother, are based on images found on the internet and in fashion magazines of celebrities wearing haute couture dresses. Kern photographs the young women in their homes and through this engagement with their personal spaces captures that transitional journey from adolescence to womanhood, revealing both their maturity and vulnerability.

'Clothes for Death' (Odjeca za Smrt) is an ongoing research based project documenting women in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina who prepare clothes in which they wish to be buried. Deeply moved upon hearing about this relatively unknown and quite private custom Kern set out to research it further. The resulting work intimately engages with the lives of women whose identities have been shaped by turbulent historical, political and cultural currents.

"In one of the photographs, taken in Orubica, in Croatia, a woman is sitting on her bed, in front of a cheap wall tapestry of the ‘Last Supper’. She is barefoot, her hands in her lap. Her head is in the place where Jesus Christ sits in the tapestry picture. We may have not even noticed this, were it not for the expression on her face, which is neither sad nor contemplative. She is neither posing, nor completely relaxed. She looks like someone who is waiting. This female Jesus in Margareta Kern’s photograph is one of the possible answers to the question ‘why take photographs.’" Miljenko Jergovic, Jutarnji List (Daily national newspaper in Croatia), Zagreb, 29th May 2008

Margareta Kern Clothes for Living & Dying, 12 September – 18 October, Margaret Harvey Gallery, St. Albans.

University of Hertfordshire Galleries

www.margaretakern.com

Margereta Kern's blog