dirty mouth (don't feel shamed)

did you promise yourself to brush your teeth twice a day? Remember, to be clean girl is to wash face.

This work is the continuation of my work "slow touching system", created in October 2023, which deals with hegemonic masculinity and its manifestation in pop culture and its exaggerated representation.

A structure can only be healed and thus changed by the fragmentary confrontation and destruction of individual building blocks. In addition, the work deals with a medium that stands out from other materials due to the possibility of dematerialization. The changeability invites to a playful approach and simultaneously reflects the domestic aspects that underlie the material.

Characteristics and personality aspects are becoming a currency in the digital age, which allow the razor-sharp categorization of an individuals in digital spheres. I can dream to be a "clean girl", a flawless version of myself and forget that these notions promote role clichés and white supremacy as an aesthetic lifestyle on the Internet. The concept of identity seems to be as fragile as never before and the obsession with it floods our feeds. The setting of the installation is reminiscent of sterile exhibition views of high-priced drugstore chains. Neoliberal compulsions of improvement want to assure us that we can buy self-realization. But becoming is not for sale, a pure conscience is just as difficult to acquire as quality of character, Nevertheless, the visitors can buy the soap blocks and receive a certificate of ownership, which assures them that this personal piece, which contains the artist's blood, sweat and tears (at least that's waht it says on the document), will now be their property forever, so I give up my claim of the work by means of a document.

The inscription on the soap reads "my heart is big enough to feel everything at once" and wants to appeal to our tolerance of ambiguity. However, this is a never-ending promise: if I don't make the effort to deal with the complexity of my environment myself, that promise is washed away, shrinking more and more, like a bar of soap next to the sink. The teeth mean a literal clean washing, reminiscent of the saying "I wash my mouth out with soap".

The teeth soaps are modeled after my own teeth at the age of 12. The soap block was first modeled digitally, then 3D printed and finally cast into silicone to obtain a soap mold. The individual steps of the process refer to the fragmentary confrontation with individual building blocks of a holistic structure.