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Growing up, Anu Põder wanted to be a dancer. But his small body did not meet the discipline’s impossible standards, so he turned to art, where fit physiques soon became his main concern. The resulting feminine forms—made of fat, surgical plastic, and fashion found materials—make up Estonian artist Anu Põder: Space for My Body, a retrospective at Switzerland’s Muzeum Susch, a picturesque private institution carved into the foothills of a mountain. The exhibition is curated by Cecilia Alemani, following the late artist Alemani’s inclusion in the 2022 Venice Biennale.
Who can: Lickers (Limsijad)2007
Photo by Federico Sette. Courtesy Muzeum Susch.
Põder’s figurative sculptures can be roughly divided into two areas: porous and plastic. It includes works of the permeable and penetrating variety Limsijad (Lickers), 2007: A hanging bust made of wire mesh, with holes patched here and there with aluminum foil. For the most part, the metal is a kind of armor that holds up the main event: giant pink satin tongues, folded and pointing upwards. This silly cage-like sculpture feels sheltered and open at the same time. It is very delicate, but if you touch it, it will hurt you. You’re not sure if the audience or the object has more damage-dealing potential. Humor relieves this exciting tension.
Edibility is similarly pushed to the brink of brutality in Põder’s porous works with garments, often removing layers of fabric to leave only the seams behind. space for my body 1995, overlaps the bottoms of all three shirts—in pink, white, and black—plus some shoulders. The lines hang from a sturdy wooden hanger that gives them volume. It’s easy to imagine the torso in negative space. The hard contours of this exoskeleton are read as protective, like armor or a cage. However, the soft, torn nature of the fabric exudes an almost pathetic vulnerability.
Anu Põder: The space of my Body1995
Photo by Patrizia Vitali. Courtesy Muzeum Susch.
Põder also got rid of other clothes in the 90s: bags, coats, shoes, all found and worn. After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, he became fascinated with the consumer culture that was new to him, so he turned to mass-produced goods. Before that, while working in the Soviet Union, he was concerned with the different ways bodies resisted conforming to idealized worker standards. It helped that he was not an official artist working for the state during this time: he earned his income as a teacher, giving him some creative freedom. A single mother of three, she maintained a studio in her state-provided apartment, where she avoided materials she could not lift and transport on her own.
In the 80s, before the fall, there were plastics. The plastic he used is surgical, with a peach tone reminiscent of the body even in its more abstract forms. He got the material from his brother, a doctor, and a room in the Muzeum Susch is dedicated to his plastic works, all scattered on a huge plinth. In these sculptures, mostly trunks, brown burlap is sewn onto pink plastic, sometimes reinforced with cork shapes. Most constructs have faces, necks, or breasts—or some combination thereof—and approach various degrees of abstraction. The forms are approximately life-size, and the features are guides that invite you to relate their shape to your body.
He mixes careful precision with repetitive and unrelenting violence in the way he stitches flesh. Around the plinth, inflatable sex dolls with black tubes for heads appear beneath the trampling of cinder blocks attached haphazardly to the wall—as if someone had dropped a heavy brick, their air-filled bodies bouncing around the room. doll installation, Tested profit. Rubber Dolls (1999), it is supplemented by other works that directly convey abjection and violence in a similar way. One, Kaekott (Bag), 1997 is a “bag” with a leather handle attached to a piece of soap made from fat, as is tradition. Another one, Oksaaugud (Knothols), 2003, is a table inlaid with bones, their joints adding bumps to its wooden surface. With these works, Põder reminds his viewers of the everyday violence behind ordinary objects, made of creatures of the past – the message could not be more important because of the way to deal with attacks that should not feel normalized. However, his sculptures are most effective when they bring to light the complex feelings we have come to accept—and even be attracted to—the various violations and vulnerabilities of the body. Põder’s strongest works are those that attract as they repel, and make you question whether you are threatened or threatened.
