ESPER POSTMA

Westfälischer Kunstverein, Münster, 2019
installation

The exhibition “Salome“ reflects on figurations of John the Baptist’s death and the way they have evolved over centuries. From medieval painting and sculpture to recent theatre and cinema, the story has served as a matrix for the negotiation of contemporary ideas about religion, gender and sexual morality.

The video installation “Dance of the Seven Veils“ is a montage of seven different movies from the 20th century that feature Salome’s dance in front of King Herod. By superimposing images from the seven films, Salome’s incarnations appear as phantoms; at certain points moving apart, at other times merging together to form a new body.

“Glossolalia“ is a porcelain sculpture based on casts of Postma’s own neck. Glossolalia, or speaking in tongues, is the act of speaking a language that one has not previously learned, which in biblical stories was a sign of a divine gift. The visceral structure appears to move through the gallery, splitting and joining, constituting a body that morphs, repeats and regenerates itself. 

The medieval wooden sculpture on display, part of the collection of the Westfälischer Kunstverein, is an example of a rich tradition figuring the prophet’s head isolated on a platter. Many of these representations seem to suggest that the brutal incision is followed by a state of blissful peace.



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Stadtmuseum Lindau, 2018
installation

The exhibition “Rebis” (Stadtmuseum Lindau, 2018) is a reflection on the ephemeral and ambivalent sexuality of biblical figures in art focusing on the Medieval period. Its central element – a painting of St. Wilgefortis from ca. 1500 – features a princess with a beard. This unlikely historical representation results from a Medieval legend about a “courageous virgin” (Latin: “virgo fortis”) forced to marry against her own will. Longing to devote her life to Christ instead, she prays to be made repulsive, which God answers by growing her a beard. The image of the crucified St. Wilgefortis merges with representations of Christ; thus intensifying the shape of androgynous icon.

Unfolding the observed polarities in Christian iconography, Postma’s work “New Clothes” translates the temporality inscribed in images of Christ and their hidden sexuality into a sequence of purple window curtains. The curtain’s fabric is sequentially thinner as one moves through the exhibition space. The ‘thinning out’ sensuously alludes to the way that the image of the infant Christ was gradually but radically refashioned in the late Middle Ages.

The sculpture “Rise of the Nuns” attests to the way that sexuality has been latent in utilities since centuries. The sculpture is made of antique roof tiles historically referred to as Nun and Monk, which pertained their form from being moulded on a human thigh. In roofings, the bottom tiles were called Nuns and the tiles covering them were called Monks. Postma’s sculpture places the tiles in the same pattern, but with the axes turned, thereby placing the Nuns on equal footing with the Monks.

Dissecting, isolating and revealing identities in Christian visual culture, “Rebis” (from Latin “res bina”, meaning dual or double matter) simultaneously emphasises the role of emotions as transmitters of visceral memory. In the exhibition’s last room stands an isolated statue of Virgin Mary from the 15th century in a lamenting pose. She covers her mouth with a veil, crying. Postma confronts her expression of grief turning her face to the light which comes through the last window, left uncovered.