BODY LANGUAGE
The heroine of Joanna Hogg’s Exhibition
is deeply connected to her London house. She settles into its corners
and ledges, lost in reverie. These gestures might have been inspired
by the work of performance artist Valie Export. In a 1976 series called Body Configurations,
Export photographed herself, wearing plain dark clothes, nestled within
elements of public buildings throughout Vienna. We see her spread face-down in a corner of
paving, wound around the base of a fluted column, draped over a steel
basement hatch, bent kneeling across a curb, lying down a run of steps,
seated inside a window box, squatting spread-legged at the outside corner of a
building, and stretched corpse-like in the gutter along the base of a
wall. Each position is simple and expressive, as if distilled from a dance.
Export
is always at the center of the photograph, and always alone. Enough context
is given to understand the scale of the architecture, which
is typically grandiose, at odds with the humility and vulnerability of her position. In the most powerful photographs her face remains hidden and her figure slack; she’s entirely surrendered to her
surroundings. The radical passivity carries tremendous sadness, as if
she’s abandoned all will. It suggests that, in order to survive, we hide.