| Let’s imagine you steal this poster |
84,1 x 59,4 cm, 500 editions |
"As the permission was not granted and I can’t legally do this, let’s imagine that I asked everybody who’s looking at this portrait now, to steal and replace it with one of the portraits of male Nobel laureates in the gallery above the Humboldt University's main foyer." Let’s imagine you steal this poster (2016), a work on political activist, academic, and author Angela Davis, marks Ahmet Ogut’s reaction against the gender-disproportionate number of male portraits on view in the hall of fame of Berlin’s Humboldt University, the institution from which Davis received her honorary Ph.D. |
 Goshka Macuga, "I tried to steal this poster", 2017. Part of the exhibition Ogut & Macuga Episode 2: The Show is Over, Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art, 2017. Photo: Jeroen Laven Macuga excavates copies of the original portraits dedicated to the university’s male Nobel prize winning alumni and staff, accidentally discovered layered behind Ogut's framed poster of Angela Davis. This act of (un)covering and repositioning corresponds to the continual necessity to excavate the deeply entrenched imbalances that continue to saturate the gender axis. |