Rosemarie Trockel (Schwerte, Germany, 1952) is one of the pillars of conceptual art. Her work encompasses diverse techniques such as ceramics, sculpture, drawing, collage, photography and, above all, what she calls “knitted pictures” — knitted works stretched over a canvas.

Characterised by insightful social criticism and subversive aesthetic strategies, her work dialogues simultaneously with the History of Art and with some ideologies of the second wave of the Feminist Movement, namely the place of women in society and the artistic field, the questioning of social hierarchies of gender and class and emancipation as a creative power. By considering the work of art as a dynamic relationship between form and concept, Rosemarie Trockel operates with expressive freedom, assuming a non-linear and undisciplined character. The reinterpretation of the “feminine” occupies a significant place in her work, expressed mainly through the creation of “paintings” that refer to historically masculinised artistic movements through a traditionally feminised technique destined for the domestic sphere: knitting.

Napoli, 1994

Video

At first, the starlings’ flight seems like a rigidly choreographed dance: their small bodies fly in coordinated, undulating movements, moving apart and closer together. Behind this apparent choreography, an invisible, non-hierarchical nature determines their flight. Curiously, the species has its own information system, in which each bird concentrates on and imitates the movements of those flying closest to it, without an individual leader dictating the flock’s movements. In its breadth of meanings, the film Napoli (1994) inspires the idea of rupture and the celebration of the starlings’ libertarian dance.