BIENNIAL PROJECT
She Knows She Is In Chicago
Marianne Mueller turns her attention to the architecture of the Chicago Cultural Center: specifically, the moments when the different stages of its life enter into contact with each other. Through her hunter-gatherer approach, which is rooted in the photographic tradition of the snapshot, and her deep understanding of architecture as being made up of a series of elements that are in essence democratic, Mueller captures the clashes between the noble architecture of the center’s nineteenth century building and the contemporary generic materials of the additions and partitions that enable its many functions today. Her blown up prints of fragments of the building interiors, installed in the vitrines at the G.A.R. Hall, open up a meta dialog about the representational role of architecture and its interiors. Mueller’s work becomes a testament to changing notions of public space and public institutions and, more critically, to architecture’s ability to survive and renew itself through time—to traverse history and speak the different languages of its present.
BIO
Marianne Mueller is a Zurich-based artist working mostly with photography, video, installation, and books. She collects observations of quotidian environments that she recontextualizes in her works, often in reaction to the specific site of an exhibition. She is a professor at the Zurich University of the Arts. Her publications include The Flock (2004), The Proper Ornaments (2008), and Stairs Etc. (2014).
