BIRGIT DIEKER BIOGRAPHY
Berlin-based Birgit Dieker makes potently abject sculptural works which challenge how female identity has been imposed by the historically dominant patriarchy. Resisting both the aestheticizing tradition of ‘the nude’ and the suppression of female desire by social conventions, she layers and cuts used clothing to explore bodies which take strange and fragmented forms. The results invoke the surrealist spirit of moving beyond the objectified body – previously regarded as ‘natural’ – to reach the freedom of an invented body. Dieker sees this recognition of identity as construction as ‘the search for a self that is concealed under layers of experience and stories, a kind of peeling away.’
