chaos diffluens
OBJECT (SEATING)
leatherette, wood shavings, wadding, polystyrene beads, dye-sublimation printing, 70 x 160 x 120 cm
Ernst Haeckel's neurotic compulsion to categorize every form of life is not only infiltrated by the social amoeba (it successfully evades any way of classification in an established system). When skeletal remains are found, the human pelvis is used to determine the person's so-called biological sex. However, this gender dimorphism is not as evident as generally described. There are correlations between body and head size and the shape of the pelvis, where, for example, the pelvic shapes of (cisgender) men and women of large stature are much more similar than those of smaller women and larger women. And this is catch-22: you tried hard to recognize a pattern, you classified it, and then another discovery just pulls you out of your comforting categorization.
Chaos Diffluens is both an object and seating. Human interaction changes the shape of the pelvis and refers, on the one hand, to the social character and formation of gender and, on the other hand, to the flexibility and possibility of changing gender and the gaps that prevail despite an allegedly binary gender system. At the same time, the pelvis is associated with birth, rebirth, reproduction and making kin.
2020
With the kind support of Jope Schneider.