Artists

Daniela Comani

Press release

The Reading Room shows central series of works and a site-specific installation by the Berlin-based Italian artist Daniela Comani. The works, produced especially for this solo exhibition, are based on the artist’s extensive archive. They address gender inequality and its socio-political entanglements in supposedly equal societies by drawing attention to issues such as violence and power dynamics that are rooted in language and its use.

Comani, who has been exploring gender, identity, and social stereotypes since the beginning of her career, often uses text-based works to expose linguistic discrimination and clichés perpetuated by the media. She frequently reverses the given gender roles and thus forces a different perception. This is also the case in the eleven new works from the series You are Mine, in which Comani continues her research into femicide. These, as well as the new video work Reversal Exercise, illustrate this process and invite the viewer to experience how a simple gender conversal dramatically changes the narrative. 

You are Mine is a continuation of a series that addresses the same crimes in Italy and was presented in 2022 at the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea in Rome. The work draws on brief press reports about domestic violence and violent relationship crimes. By incorporating articles from German media, the urgency of the issue is highlighted, revealing it as a pressing problem right on our doorstep.

The site-specific installation Orlando’s Library is organised in a similar way. Dedicated to Virginia Woolf’s gender-fluid character Orlando, it shows bookshelves with a well-known reading canon that is now bewilderingly dominated by heroines. In addition, the ongoing series Cover Versions will be shown, in which the artist reinterprets magazine covers with self-portraits to create a media diary.