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Birke Gorm

Birke Gorm
First Monographs
Phileas – The Austrian Office for Contemporary Art

How Materials Unmask the Patriarchy

Gathering discarded materials is a central element of Birke Gorm’s (b. Hamburg, 1986; lives and works in Vienna) practice. The Danish-German artist seeks out stuff that is redundant, defective, or unsaleable and regarded as “dead” in the capitalist system. Brownish-dark hues are as characteristic of Gorm’s works as the basicness of her materials. Jute, burlap, wood, ceramic, or stones would seem to hail from a place far removed from our highly industrialized world of slick surfaces. By reappropriating techniques from the domestic sphere such as sewing that have historically been asso- ciated with women, the artist points up the potentials inherent in the production and circulation of everyday objects for a dismantling of patriarchal hierarchies. This makes Gorm’s works compelling symbolic figures that speak to criteria of value, materiality, and labor in the context of gender roles and equality.

The publication in the series First Monographs (previous volumes have been dedicated to Sophie Thun, 2022, and Christian Kosmas Mayer, 2023) offers a broader readership insight into the artist’s practice. With essays by Jonas Eika, Michelle Millar Fisher, and Attilia Fattori Franchini, a photo essay by Daniela Trost, and an interview between Birke Gorm and the multimedia artist Hannah Heilmann.