Series 2007 – 2018: Patchwork identities on the topic of migration and stereotypes.
@ Brandenburgisches Landesmuseum für moderne Kunst (BLMK Dieselkraftwerk), Cottbus. Photo: Marlies Kross
"Identikit Trivision", @ Neurotitan Galerie, Berlin 2018
@ 30works Galerie, Köln 2014
Berlin 2008 (Photo: K!WA / flickr.com/photos/kiwa-one)
@ Brooklynite Gallery, NYC 2008 (Photo: runtoline / flickr.com/photos/runtoline)
This series playfully discusses the topic of identities and clichés. Identities are highly complex whereas clichés are the embodiment of simplification. Faces of well-known personalities are cut into horizontal stripes coming upon keywords. With each changing element, the images awaken new associations challenging us to reflect our own prejudices, privileges and beliefs.
On the occasion of the Leipzig Book Fair 2018, Various & Gould have been invited by journalist and author Mohamed Amjahid, curator of the panel program Europa21, to visually underline it with an artistic position. Therefore, the artist duo has completely reworked their Identikit series (from 2007) in light of the current situation in Europe.
“By montaging various, also gender-connoted, details of portraits and text fragments […] in a silkscreening process, they contradict superficial identitarian notions of the construction of the subject. Some details offer possibilities for identification; others do not, leading to an interrogation of phantasms of identification.”
Sønke Gau & Katharina Schlieben, Katalog Help!, Museum of Design Zürich, 2009
“What I really like about the posters, is that there is no good and evil. Identity is diverse […] In the best case, we open up new conceptual spaces with the posters.”
Ulrike Kremeier, Director of the Brandenburgisches Landesmuseum für moderne Kunst (BLMK), at Lausitzer Rundschau, Feb 2018
“The series of Identikits displayed at the book fair and throughout Leipzig in 2018 were eye-catching, stirred a desire for more and – what was particularly exciting for me as a political author – carried a strong political message. Human rights, equality and a critical reappraisal of both the distant past and recent history are key if we are to resolve the ongoing crisis in Europe.”
Mohamed Amjahid, journalist, author and curator, quote from the book Various & Gould: Permanently Improvised, 2019