EXPORT VALISE. DOPPELGANGER

The double is a monumental bronze sculpture, depicting huge double shears. The object is disturbing, ambiguous and open to different interpretations. In the title, the artist used a German term for the double (der Doppelgänger), which in popular beliefs functions as a spiritual companion, the “second self” or “shadow”. This character was popularized in the literature of Romanticism by the eighteenth-century German writer Jean Paul (a.k.a. Johann Paul Friedrich Richter), who is credited with the authorship of the word, and similar figures also appeared in the culture of Scandinavia and Ireland. Doppelgänger in the humanities was used to describe the duality of human nature, hidden aspects of the psyche, or complex identities.

VALIE EXPORT presents this character in the female version by adding the ending “-in”, creating a new word and concept. To depict it, he uses monumental doubled scissors. They can be both an attribute of seamstresses and seamstresses — a symbol of needlework, stereotypically attributed to women — and a tool used in the editing of films. It can also be a reference to a surgical tool and refer to “improving”, trimming the body. On this superhuman scale, they also acquire a symbolic weight that is distributed between violence (when they become instruments of control over women's bodies) and agency (when they are in the right hands). Duality enhances their interpretive potential.

In the center of Warsaw, scissors can be both a memory of violence recorded in the history of this place, and a reminder of the role of women excluded from the center of social life. At the same time, they become a sign of detachment from the past and a new beginning. The interpretation is in our hands and depends on what we do or omit in the future.