Kim

Kim is a video recording of one of the performances from the Mistresses and Heroines triptych. In the subsequent versions, the artist repeats the gestures of Sophie Calle, Kim Sooja, and Sam Taylor Wood – women artists whose explorations are seen as vital for the feminist thought. Dziemian plays the mentioned artists as a director and, in the case of the reenacted action by Kim, he is also the performer. His works are reinterpretations, where the essence lies in the sexual identity of the author – obviously different than what it was in the original. Dziemian thus reverses the traditional social order: whilst women are used to playing man’s roles, it is not very often that men adopt the roles of women.

In the work from Kolekcja II, the artist stands still in London’s Trafalgar Square, just as Kim Sooja stood in the streets of many cities of the world. Both artists are similarly invisible – she as a woman, he as a man. The reactions of those passing by Kim were diverse – from indifference to interest. Nobody noticed Dziemian. One or two people may have pushed him slightly on passing by, maybe looked at him, walked by, or tellingly looked away. Dziemian refers here to a series of Kim’s performances called A Needle Woman. The needle from the title related not only to the activities traditionally assigned to women but also to the needle of the compass used to tell the cardinal directions. Whilst for Kim the gender issue was one of the different motifs in her actions, for Dziemian it is the key issue.

The video fits into the stream of research on masculinity as a cultural category. The unmoving figure of the artist triggers thinking about the role of the man. His passivity, which stands in opposition to activity associated with masculinity, is here to draw attention to the different manifestations of manliness and the need for respect of the multitude of psychological and social models of manhood. Kim’s action found analogies in the abundant theoretical background of gender or women studies, elaborated by historians and sociologists. Similar research focusing on masculinity as a cultural category is hard to come by. In Poland, it is fairly nonexistent. The academic methodology and terminology used is that of women studies. Dziemian borrows the modi operandi from women artists and postulates the need to rethink the stereotypical take on a man and his cultural roots.

Izabela Kopania