“TRANSFORM THE QUALITIES OF OBJECT/SCENES BY BREAKING THEM” Lisa Stuckey on Constanze Ruhm at Belvedere 21, Vienna
Review of the exhibition Constanze Ruhm: Come una pupilla al variare della luce, published by TEXTE ZUR KUNST, September 29, 2023, https://www.textezurkunst.de/en/articles/lisa-stuckey-constanze-ruhm-transform-the-qualities-of-object-scenes-by-breaking-them/
“Like a pupil in the changing of light” – the poetic title of Constanze Ruhm’s latest exhibition already seems to indicate the immediate effect that the visuals, emanating from the films presented at Belvedere 21, might have on their spectators. Through these video works as well as historical objects and documents, Ruhm not only comments on and updates the feminist movements of the 1970s in Italy; she also tests a feminist way of seeing that aims to shatter patriarchal regimes of looking. Moreover, based on strategies such as archival research, photographic reenactment, and essayistic writing, the forensic narrative fabric of this exhibition addresses meta-questions of feminist historiography, as Lisa Stuckey explains. Taking the motif of the broken mirror, which features prominently in Ruhm’s films, as a starting point, Stuckey offers three theoretically and methodologically different reflections on this exhibition.
