WhyWhyArt

Community Hospital   Exhibiting Artist & Artwork

Susanne Junker   //   The Fertility Meal

The Fertility Meal, 2015

Photography & Video

80 x 50 cm Limited edition of 3
For ‘Community Hospital’, Susanne Junker is presenting new autobiographic works about fertility, pregnancy and the change of a female body after birthing a child. “le repas (m) de la fertilité (f)” (the fertility meal) is an approach to raise awareness to subject matters like: prenatal sex selection, preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) and female foetus abortion. “Where are all the girls?” is an ongoing question in China and other traditionally influenced places and is best described in the ancient “Book of Songs” (1000-700 B.C.): “When a son is born, Let him sleep on the bed, Clothe him with fine clothes, And give him jade to play… When a daughter is born, Let her sleep on the ground, Wrap her in common wrappings, And give broken tiles to play…” Using herself as author and subject in previous series of photographic works where Junker embraced themes of gender identification, the objectivisation of women and the use of feminine sexuality in media, she documents now the change of her body after giving birth in 2014. As a daily routine she deconstructs her transformed body and posts this puzzle on Instagram. 365 / 2015 is a day to day process and a consequent reminder of ongoing change, an observation of ageing, a discovery of a new self, a recovery of degenerating body parts and a daily exercise to use familiar creativity with displeasing arias of skin and flesh, regards and moods in non staged ambiances.

Susanne Junker is a photography artist. She was born in Germany in 1973 and is currently based in Paris, France and Shanghai, China. Live and work. She is a self-taught artist who is based primarily on identity and feminism.

Self-observation began as a child, and Susan uses her own body as a canvas to interpret ideas about social issues, feminism, and feminine behavior. In the career of working as a model in the 1990s, the exposure life like “meiosis” began to break her expectations of herself. From then on, she struggled in what she once described as “all-weather perfection”. Since then, she has begun to delve into gender identification, female materialization, and the use of gender in the use of photography, video, painting, and performance in the media. In addition, between 2008 and 2013, Tank founded and hosted the artist’s own art space, Stage Waiting for Back, in Shanghai, China.