Orshi Drozdik - O.D.F.A.M. Orshi Drozdik Feminist Art Museum

The exhibition "Orshi Drozdik Feminist Art Museum" (O.D.F.A.M.) shows photographic works and paintings by the feminist performance artist Orshi Drozdik. Drozdik received her education at the Academy in Budapest and then lived mainly in Amsterdam and New York. Through the use of different forms of expression and media, Drozdik has been concerned since the 1970s with the political and cultural representation of the female body under the influence of a patriarchal society. Drozdik's continuously developed concept of the "ImageBank", a collection of photographed pictorial material that includes art historical images as well as media images of popular culture, forms the basis for her work. Photography and collecting both serve as a starting point to critically illuminate the generated meanings and ideological implications of patriarchal image production. By means of light projection, the photographs are integrated into Drozdik's performative practice and recontextualized through the interplay with the staging of her mostly naked female body. The artist photographically captures the confrontation between image and body, creating new material for further artistic use.

The exhibition includes several of the artist's early photo series that are part of the procedure described. In her first series Individual Mythology (1975), Orshi Drozdik integrates photos of dancers from the ImageBank into the staging of her body. She thus establishes an artistic connection between the dynamics of her performance and the pioneers of dance and choreography portrayed, emphasizing her self-determination as a female artist. The series Blink and Sigh (1977) is related to Drozdik's exploration of the songs of Armanda Lear, who was celebrated as a "disco queen" in the mid-1970s. While Lear's Song I am a photograph deals with how a woman becomes a glamorous advertising image through the male gaze, Orshi Drozdik focuses on an artistic self-determination whose core consists of creating her own image and expressing her own feminist subjectivity.