The Semiotics of Dressing, 2025
Jaqueline Sullivan Gallery
New York, United States
Jaqueline Sullivan Gallery
New York, United States
The act of dressing, though an ordinary domestic rite, is an exquisitely choreographed performance. Subtle repeated movements, gestures and tactile engagement with furniture, objects and surrounding space demonstrate a private yet performative way of being. The dressing room represents a lexicon of endless meaning and possibility, an open stage where routines and patterns naturally articulate a distinct personal identity. The exhibition’s title, The Semiotics of Dressing is an ode to the artist Martha Rosler’s feminist video work, The Semiotics of the Kitchen (1975), which explored the unsettling significance of everyday kitchen utensils as symbols of domestic labor, oppression and control. Similarly, this exhibition investigates the way in which a seemingly banal and habitual task can be laden with complex notions of identity, power, agency and self actualization.
In The Semiotics of Dressing, contemporary artists interrogate the concept of the dressing room as a private place of metamorphosis; it is a jewel box where delicate adornments become instruments in service of beauty. Furniture, lighting, art and decorative objects comprise the dressing room’s scenography, a deliberate and thoughtful – even possibly peculiar – arrangement. Particular rituals exercised in private (even secret) versus what is public (the costume, the mask), provide fertile grounds for artistic exploration throughout a variety of materials such as metal, gemstones, textiles, glass, found objects and more. These artistic articulations signify the act of dressing as a singular, theatrical composition, uniquely one’s own.
In The Semiotics of Dressing, contemporary artists interrogate the concept of the dressing room as a private place of metamorphosis; it is a jewel box where delicate adornments become instruments in service of beauty. Furniture, lighting, art and decorative objects comprise the dressing room’s scenography, a deliberate and thoughtful – even possibly peculiar – arrangement. Particular rituals exercised in private (even secret) versus what is public (the costume, the mask), provide fertile grounds for artistic exploration throughout a variety of materials such as metal, gemstones, textiles, glass, found objects and more. These artistic articulations signify the act of dressing as a singular, theatrical composition, uniquely one’s own.
BORN WITH A SILVER SPOON, 2025
softpower e.v., Berlin, Germany
softpower e.v., Berlin, Germany
Act I: BORN WITH A SILVER SPOON
As you step into the dimly lit elevator, the air shifts - time itself seems to slow.
Before you stands an authority, offering a hand, a tool for your journey.
Choose your friend wisely!
You have only a moment before the doors open again.
Your journey begins.
Act II: FROM THE FOUNTAIN OF LIFE
You enter a transitional space,a symbolic arrival on sphere.
Before you, a fountain flows.
AMBROSIA TONIC
Drink from me!
Use your tool, your new hand.
SMALL PICKLES
are placed gently upon your tongue, floating in liquid, like our bodies before we arrived.
Soft fabric catches your fingertips- a cloth napkin, a moment of grace.
Will you embrace pleasure?
Can you surrender to the current?
A moment lingers, then the path unfolds.
Together, we move forward.
Act III:
THERE IS NO SPOON
Reality bends like liquid steel. To shape it, unlearn its shape.
Before you:
PANI PURI PRE-RIGOR SALMON TAMARIND
BEETROOT BOUILLON MUSHROOM BAOZI
MISO EGGPLANT CORN TORTILLA KADAYIF
PICKLED ONION
BUFFALO CAULIFLOWER MASHED POTATOES
Look up.
Tube shakers await your command.
Your tools are here, use carefully! Transform what you see. The moment is fluid.
What will you create?
The air thickens, the moment suspends.
A pause lingers on the horizon.
Wait for the gong SMOKERS BREAK
Act IV:
SPOONING
A table stretches endlessly before you,
a gleaming river of life,
a sweet abyss.
a melody weaving through
like a final lullaby.
Before you, the PAVLOVA
delicate and weightless,
its surface whispers of
YUZU AND MASCARPONE,
a final indulgence,
a fleeting moment of sweetness.
A spoon sinks,
cracking the fragile shell
fragments scatter like memories,
dissolving on the tongue.
The past melts away,
sugar coating your farewell.
Nothing truly ends.
Only transforms.
As you step into the dimly lit elevator, the air shifts - time itself seems to slow.
Before you stands an authority, offering a hand, a tool for your journey.
Choose your friend wisely!
You have only a moment before the doors open again.
Your journey begins.
Act II: FROM THE FOUNTAIN OF LIFE
You enter a transitional space,a symbolic arrival on sphere.
Before you, a fountain flows.
AMBROSIA TONIC
Drink from me!
Use your tool, your new hand.
SMALL PICKLES
are placed gently upon your tongue, floating in liquid, like our bodies before we arrived.
Soft fabric catches your fingertips- a cloth napkin, a moment of grace.
Will you embrace pleasure?
Can you surrender to the current?
A moment lingers, then the path unfolds.
Together, we move forward.
Act III:
THERE IS NO SPOON
Reality bends like liquid steel. To shape it, unlearn its shape.
Before you:
PANI PURI PRE-RIGOR SALMON TAMARIND
BEETROOT BOUILLON MUSHROOM BAOZI
MISO EGGPLANT CORN TORTILLA KADAYIF
PICKLED ONION
BUFFALO CAULIFLOWER MASHED POTATOES
Look up.
Tube shakers await your command.
Your tools are here, use carefully! Transform what you see. The moment is fluid.
What will you create?
The air thickens, the moment suspends.
A pause lingers on the horizon.
Wait for the gong SMOKERS BREAK
Act IV:
SPOONING
A table stretches endlessly before you,
a gleaming river of life,
a sweet abyss.
a melody weaving through
like a final lullaby.
Before you, the PAVLOVA
delicate and weightless,
its surface whispers of
YUZU AND MASCARPONE,
a final indulgence,
a fleeting moment of sweetness.
A spoon sinks,
cracking the fragile shell
fragments scatter like memories,
dissolving on the tongue.
The past melts away,
sugar coating your farewell.
Nothing truly ends.
Only transforms.
LUCID DREAMS, 2024
ST VINCENTS, ANTWERP
ST VINCENTS, ANTWERP
LUSTGARDERN, PLANTERS, COUR SPACE, ANTWERP, BELGIUM, 2023
PASSIFLORA
Through the work of Hannah Kuhlmann & Delphine Lejeune
At the top of a rocky mountain, at a place unknown today, stood for many centuries a peculiar little plant. It grew next to some stately trees and long grasses, next to wildflowers and rose gardens, looking over cliffs upon oceans vast and jungles of old.
Even though the area was surrounded by all this beauty, it was still this seemingly little plant that stole the show. For at times the plant grew a flower, a flower so strange and enchanting that she remained the beauty of that entire hillside. The flower, later named Passiflora, stood in the middle of the path and when blooming captured the attention of many passers-by for a grand amount of time, each of them halting in their journey to look at the little thing.
The sun and the moon found it first. In
Brazil it was the Tupi-Guarani that explained the debut of the Passiflora. Their story starts with a forbidden love affair, the beginning of many fine stories. It was the Moon (landé) and the Sun (Jaci) that fell into this old lover's cliché. And even though their love was strong, the climate of the story goes cold rather quickly. Their secret is discovered by the supreme god, Tupã, who is furious with the Moon and the Sun. Tupã acts severely and banishes them to opposite sides of the sky, separating them forever. But the love of Moon and Sun was strong, and their longing for each other agony. Both shed many tears over the loss of the other, drip drip drip upon the earth, while missing each other every night, by an inch, at the switch of the light.
There is no happy ending to this story. The sun still sets, the moon still rises, even till this day. Yet where their tears fell on the earth, the littlest sparkle of their love, of beauty, persists, and out of the damp soil the tears transform into a vine that
carries beautiful Aowers and a fruit. The fruit, their offspring, showing the radiant Sun on her outer shell, and the moon's tears in her inner flesh and seeds. And even in de busy streets of Antwerp, when the two celestial beings pass each other, a Passiflora in the flower shop on the corner feels their passing, shudders its leaves and the one who looks closely sees its stamens tremble, as it closes its petals with each coming of dawn.
It was the Spaniards who noticed the flower next. They recognized it at once, from the tips of its stamens to the number of its petals, the body of Christ! They gave it its Latin name, that would eventually become the English "Passionflower"; passio meaning suffering. The flower immediately became a symbol for the last days of their Jesus, in particular his crucifixion, and in every part they recognized a part of his body and of the dreadful moments of his suffering: the Holy Lance [a], the ten apostles [b] (leaving out those that betrayed or defied him), the crown of thorns [c], the Holy Grail [d], the three nails [e], the five wounds [f] (four by the nails and one by the lance) and the whips [g] were all found within the flower, Heaven and Purity in the colors, the three years of Jesus' ministry in the period that the flower remind opened. Some of the most enthusiastic supporters of this Christian symbolism even stated that the place where the flower was first discovered (somewhere in Peru) could have been the site of the Garden of Eden, and that the apple with which the serpent to tempted Eve was actually a passion fruit (yet this information was only found on a blog) .
The Spaniards stripped the plant of all past identity and took it home with them at the other end of the sea, where it at once began adorning churches, glass windows and book illustra-tions, its use coming to a peak during the Victorian era. Now, some centuries later, it is planted in gardens and living rooms.
54 Middle-aged men dabble in the creation of hybrids, and all are sold and bought at large garden centra, given names like "Snow Queen", "Party Animal" or even named after their breeders' mothers and wives.
The stripping and regifting of identity
and names is a common phenomenon in the world of botanica.
Scientists, searching for a way to make sense of the world, classify plants with their musty Latin names and biological terminology.
So the plant was eventually called the Passiflora, a genus of more than 550 species of flowering plants and the type genus of the family Passifloracee. This family consists mostly of a species of vines carrying tendrils for attachment but have many variations in roots and stems. The distinctive and often colorful filaments in the corona give the Passiflora its alien-like look, and many of the flowers eventually ripen into the tasty passion fruit. Each species' sex-life is different: while some rely on pollination by bees and other winged creatures, others remain more independent and are capable of self-pollination'. Some even develop a proto-carnivorous diet, killing insects that land on them while unable to digest or absorb anything ("proto-" implying that their evolutionary path could eventually lead to a carnivorous lifestyle).
Today, the flower still stands in the middle of the path, right where we left it at the start of this story. But now we run into its ghost in a Lustgarten. At the center, a few of them stand proudly.
These "pleasure gardens" were conceived as private paradises for the upper class, who forced nature into symmetry and geometrical shapes, producing a seemingly harmonious mixture of nature and the manmade, often ornamented by stone-cold gods, statues and myths displayed on pedestals. Hannah Kuhlmann and Delphine Lejeune shaped another temporary resting place for these ghosts of the real thing, placing an artificial offspring of the Passiflora within a Lustgarten of their own.
This Passiflora-is-Jesus-enthusiasm was not adopted by all.
John Parkinson published Paradisus in 1629 and appended the following commentary to his portrait of the flower:
"some superstitious Jesuite would faine make men believe, that in the flower of this plant are to be seen all the marks of our Savious Passion: and therefore call it Flos Passionis: and to that end have caused figures to be drawne and printed with all the parts proportioned out, as thorne, nailes, speare, whippe, pillar etc in it", before adding scornfully "and all as true as the Sea burnes... God never willed his Priests to instruct his people with lyes: for they come from the Divell, the author of them."
2. On the edge of limestone cliffs in Belize grows the Passiflora xiikzods, discovered in 1992. The name derives from the Mayan "batwing", and in the wild this dark species of Passiflora is found in proximity to Mayan temples. The xiikzods is a mystery among the Passiflora, states Dr. Vanderplank, expert in the Passiflora, as it has no nectar; moreover, its pollinators are unknown as is the reward that would motivate their return.
Experts can only guess how her offspring is produced. The gooey dark red center might resemble blood, which could attract wasps; this might explain why the plant only grows near Mayan temples. Regarding the blood, Vanderplank states: it seems there was usually plenty of the real thing about!
Through the work of Hannah Kuhlmann & Delphine Lejeune
At the top of a rocky mountain, at a place unknown today, stood for many centuries a peculiar little plant. It grew next to some stately trees and long grasses, next to wildflowers and rose gardens, looking over cliffs upon oceans vast and jungles of old.
Even though the area was surrounded by all this beauty, it was still this seemingly little plant that stole the show. For at times the plant grew a flower, a flower so strange and enchanting that she remained the beauty of that entire hillside. The flower, later named Passiflora, stood in the middle of the path and when blooming captured the attention of many passers-by for a grand amount of time, each of them halting in their journey to look at the little thing.
The sun and the moon found it first. In
Brazil it was the Tupi-Guarani that explained the debut of the Passiflora. Their story starts with a forbidden love affair, the beginning of many fine stories. It was the Moon (landé) and the Sun (Jaci) that fell into this old lover's cliché. And even though their love was strong, the climate of the story goes cold rather quickly. Their secret is discovered by the supreme god, Tupã, who is furious with the Moon and the Sun. Tupã acts severely and banishes them to opposite sides of the sky, separating them forever. But the love of Moon and Sun was strong, and their longing for each other agony. Both shed many tears over the loss of the other, drip drip drip upon the earth, while missing each other every night, by an inch, at the switch of the light.
There is no happy ending to this story. The sun still sets, the moon still rises, even till this day. Yet where their tears fell on the earth, the littlest sparkle of their love, of beauty, persists, and out of the damp soil the tears transform into a vine that
carries beautiful Aowers and a fruit. The fruit, their offspring, showing the radiant Sun on her outer shell, and the moon's tears in her inner flesh and seeds. And even in de busy streets of Antwerp, when the two celestial beings pass each other, a Passiflora in the flower shop on the corner feels their passing, shudders its leaves and the one who looks closely sees its stamens tremble, as it closes its petals with each coming of dawn.
It was the Spaniards who noticed the flower next. They recognized it at once, from the tips of its stamens to the number of its petals, the body of Christ! They gave it its Latin name, that would eventually become the English "Passionflower"; passio meaning suffering. The flower immediately became a symbol for the last days of their Jesus, in particular his crucifixion, and in every part they recognized a part of his body and of the dreadful moments of his suffering: the Holy Lance [a], the ten apostles [b] (leaving out those that betrayed or defied him), the crown of thorns [c], the Holy Grail [d], the three nails [e], the five wounds [f] (four by the nails and one by the lance) and the whips [g] were all found within the flower, Heaven and Purity in the colors, the three years of Jesus' ministry in the period that the flower remind opened. Some of the most enthusiastic supporters of this Christian symbolism even stated that the place where the flower was first discovered (somewhere in Peru) could have been the site of the Garden of Eden, and that the apple with which the serpent to tempted Eve was actually a passion fruit (yet this information was only found on a blog) .
The Spaniards stripped the plant of all past identity and took it home with them at the other end of the sea, where it at once began adorning churches, glass windows and book illustra-tions, its use coming to a peak during the Victorian era. Now, some centuries later, it is planted in gardens and living rooms.
54 Middle-aged men dabble in the creation of hybrids, and all are sold and bought at large garden centra, given names like "Snow Queen", "Party Animal" or even named after their breeders' mothers and wives.
The stripping and regifting of identity
and names is a common phenomenon in the world of botanica.
Scientists, searching for a way to make sense of the world, classify plants with their musty Latin names and biological terminology.
So the plant was eventually called the Passiflora, a genus of more than 550 species of flowering plants and the type genus of the family Passifloracee. This family consists mostly of a species of vines carrying tendrils for attachment but have many variations in roots and stems. The distinctive and often colorful filaments in the corona give the Passiflora its alien-like look, and many of the flowers eventually ripen into the tasty passion fruit. Each species' sex-life is different: while some rely on pollination by bees and other winged creatures, others remain more independent and are capable of self-pollination'. Some even develop a proto-carnivorous diet, killing insects that land on them while unable to digest or absorb anything ("proto-" implying that their evolutionary path could eventually lead to a carnivorous lifestyle).
Today, the flower still stands in the middle of the path, right where we left it at the start of this story. But now we run into its ghost in a Lustgarten. At the center, a few of them stand proudly.
These "pleasure gardens" were conceived as private paradises for the upper class, who forced nature into symmetry and geometrical shapes, producing a seemingly harmonious mixture of nature and the manmade, often ornamented by stone-cold gods, statues and myths displayed on pedestals. Hannah Kuhlmann and Delphine Lejeune shaped another temporary resting place for these ghosts of the real thing, placing an artificial offspring of the Passiflora within a Lustgarten of their own.
This Passiflora-is-Jesus-enthusiasm was not adopted by all.
John Parkinson published Paradisus in 1629 and appended the following commentary to his portrait of the flower:
"some superstitious Jesuite would faine make men believe, that in the flower of this plant are to be seen all the marks of our Savious Passion: and therefore call it Flos Passionis: and to that end have caused figures to be drawne and printed with all the parts proportioned out, as thorne, nailes, speare, whippe, pillar etc in it", before adding scornfully "and all as true as the Sea burnes... God never willed his Priests to instruct his people with lyes: for they come from the Divell, the author of them."
2. On the edge of limestone cliffs in Belize grows the Passiflora xiikzods, discovered in 1992. The name derives from the Mayan "batwing", and in the wild this dark species of Passiflora is found in proximity to Mayan temples. The xiikzods is a mystery among the Passiflora, states Dr. Vanderplank, expert in the Passiflora, as it has no nectar; moreover, its pollinators are unknown as is the reward that would motivate their return.
Experts can only guess how her offspring is produced. The gooey dark red center might resemble blood, which could attract wasps; this might explain why the plant only grows near Mayan temples. Regarding the blood, Vanderplank states: it seems there was usually plenty of the real thing about!
Farm is a free participatory art and design project by ten young artists and designers and the organic farm Rimpertsweiler near Lake Constance in Germany.
The project is an open exploration of rural life on a farm and thematically deals with concepts of alternative production methods, organic material cycles and the relationship between humans, plants, animals, soil and technology in relation to our everyday practice. In a place that keeps waste to a minimum, we learn about the relationship between cow dung and cabbage and the sensitive balance of the whole organism. To the rhythmic sounds of milking machines, we dive deep into daily routines and understand what regionality and seasonality mean away from the supermarket shelves. Through a crossdisciplinary exchange with people from the surrounding area and the farm itself, various objects as well as experimental and site-specific works are developed as a result. Presented in an open-field exhibition on the farm, the project aims to foster a cultural and social dialogue in a non-institutionalised space and bring people from urban and rural areas together. The project will be extended through various workshops by the group as well as local artists, which will expand the exhibition over a two month summer period.
The project is an open exploration of rural life on a farm and thematically deals with concepts of alternative production methods, organic material cycles and the relationship between humans, plants, animals, soil and technology in relation to our everyday practice. In a place that keeps waste to a minimum, we learn about the relationship between cow dung and cabbage and the sensitive balance of the whole organism. To the rhythmic sounds of milking machines, we dive deep into daily routines and understand what regionality and seasonality mean away from the supermarket shelves. Through a crossdisciplinary exchange with people from the surrounding area and the farm itself, various objects as well as experimental and site-specific works are developed as a result. Presented in an open-field exhibition on the farm, the project aims to foster a cultural and social dialogue in a non-institutionalised space and bring people from urban and rural areas together. The project will be extended through various workshops by the group as well as local artists, which will expand the exhibition over a two month summer period.
SUGARCARPET, SCHLOßHOLLENEGG, AUSTRIA, 2022
more archive projects coming soon