“Silent Performer” presents new works by Copenhagen based artist Kristina Bengtsson and consists of a photographic series, a sound piece pressed on vinyl and an alteration to the main door of the gallery. Alongside these works, a poster edition made specifically for the exhibition at C.C.C is available. The poster edition is a photograph of the gallery’s vacuum cleaner, the eponymous Silent Performer.
The exhibition aims to address various attitudes of performativity entangled with public and domestic everyday life. The individual works come together to highlight agency in repetitive activity through a practicing body and to address the invisible labour that occurs behind closed doors. The works in the exhibition are all, in their own way, performers and have reoccurring materials, shapes and actions.
The series of photographs depicts the various states of an onion being chopped. These static compositions show the onion getting chopped into smaller, more fleshy pieces, photographed from the cook’s point of view.
The sound piece is a recording made in the gallery by the artist as she vacuumed the whole space including the office and toilet. The duration of the piece is the time it took to complete the action. The sound, despite the fact that the model of vacuum cleaner is ‘silent performer’, is harsh and noisy, due to the metal head meeting the concrete floor. The sound piece is placed in the office and is activated by the visitors putting the record on.
By installing a closing mechanism, the door into the gallery is far heavier than usual. For people who regularly visit the gallery, the increased resistance is more noticeable than to people who visit for the first time. This work, once again, draws attention to repetitive daily activities and conditioned behaviours, while also highlighting the coded spaces of the art world.
