Identikit – Update

On the occasion of the Leipzig Book Fair 2018, Various & Gould have been invited by journalist and author Mohamed Amjahid, curator of the program Europa21, to visually underline it with an artistic position. Therefore, the artist duo has created new versions of their Identikit series started in 2007/08.

This project discusses the topic of immigration, identities and clichés. Identities are highly complex and always diverse whereas clichés are the embodiment of simplification.

To visualize this issue Various & Gould have chosen a technique known from children’s books. Portraits of prominent personages and words are horizontally cut into strips enabling to rearrange them in endless variations. There are numerous different options – some make sense, some do not, but most invoke images confronting the viewer with own stereotypes and clichés.

(Europa21 is a collaboration of Robert Bosch Stiftung and Leipzig Book Fair.)