The Translocals exhibition, currently on view at Bildhalle, in Zürich, Switzerland, is a series of internal views of historic and modern receptacles, of which Sinje Dillenkofer took photographs in private and public collections or museum archives, among them the Louvre in Paris. The main focus of her interest is on empty containers, cases, caskets and boxes – the “architectures of the archive”. For the artist, showing how certain objects are stored, archived and saved has the status of a “sociocultural examination” from which power structures and moral values can be deduced. The ways in which a specific society and culture archives artefacts tells us much about what it considers “beautiful”, “significant” or “important”.
Dillenkofer‘s photographs are autonomous, abstract pictures in which time and the past become visible. The lines and shapes emerge because precious items such as scientific instruments, jewelry or articles for everyday use have been protected and archived. The objects themselves do not appear in the pictures, but are present through the negative form of the upholstered hollow space. Their impression allows the photographs to assume a painterly quality, a poetic life of their own.
Sinje Dillenkofer uses photography as an artistic medium and a documentary tool that allows here to thematize her view of life and society. Her works analyze social structures, moral values and concepts of nature. They are typological studies that ask how much individuality and respect a society is prepared to accord to something it considers to be “alien” or “trustworthy”.
Sinje Dillenkofer, Translocals
March 25 to May 6, 2017
Stauffacherquai 56
8004 Zürich
Switzerland
