Sidsel Meineche Hansen : SECOND SEX WAR

Gasworks presents SECOND SEX WAR, a solo exhibition and seminar series convened by London-based artist Sidsel Meineche Hansen.

Meineche Hansen produces exhibitions, interdisciplinary seminars and publications that foreground the body and its industrial complex in what she refers to as a “techno-somatic variant of institutional critique.” Her research-led practice includes woodcut prints, sculptures and CGI animations often made by combining her own low-tech manual craft with outsourced, skilled digital labour.

SECOND SEX WAR features several new commissions, including a pornographic CGI animation, a series of laser-cut drawings and a large-scale ceramic relief. Presented on a virtual reality headset, the animation DICKGIRL 3D(X) appropriates hypersexualised 3D models, “genitalia props” and readymade “pose sets” used for animating sex scenes to critique post-human porn production from within. The large-scale clay relief Cultural Capital Cooperative Object, meanwhile, made with the artists Manuela Gernedel, Alan Michael, Georgie Nettell, Oliver Rees, Matthew Richardson, Gili Tal and Lena Tutunjian, aims to congeal the group’s cultural capital into a cooperatively owned object. In addition, the existing CGI animation No Right Way 2 Cum (2015) and ceramic sculpture Cite Werkflow Ltd (2016) expand, in different ways, on the artist’s research into the commodity status of virtual 3D models in relation to gender. As a whole, SECOND SEX WAR incorporates and reflects on the artist’s working relationships—with peers, the avatar EVA 3.0 and digital arts studio Werkflow Ltd.

SECOND SEX WAR is commissioned by Gasworks in partnership with Trondheim Kunstmuseum, and supported by the Danish Arts Foundation. The exhibition will open in Trondheim on June 12, 2016.

SECOND SEX WAR seminars, initiated by Sidsel Meineche Hansen and hosted by Gasworks.

Sensational Images: Visual Vocabularies of Gendered Affect
Wednesday, April 13, 7pm
Helen Hester discusses how pornographic filmmakers develop strategies for visually representing erotic affects that do not lend themselves to easy visualisation.

Always Already Dead: Unbecoming Object / Possible Objects of a New Feminist Art Practice
Thursday, May 26, 7pm
Linda Stupart reconsiders objectification and abjection as sites of resistance for queer and femme bodies under neoliberalism, while Josefine Wikström discusses the transformation of the category of feminist art through philosophical discourses on the “object” and “practice.”

Other related events

PASSION and POWER: The Technology of Orgasm
Tuesday, April 26, 7pm
Directed by Emiko Omori and Wendy Slick, the film PASSION and POWER: The Technology of Orgasm tells the story of the invention of the vibrator and its relationship to the female orgasm. 


Spring open studios
Open studios: Saturday, March 19, 12–6pm
Artists’ talks: Saturday, March 19, 4–5:30pm

Martha Atienza (Philippines), hosted in the Outset Residency Studio
Nicolás Gullotta (Argentina), hosted in the Roberts Residency Studio
Mariana Silva (Portugal), hosted in the Sackler Residency Studio
Ramaya Tegegne (Switzerland), hosted in the Juan Yarur Torres Residency Studio

Gasworks’ current international artists in residence open their studios to the public throughout the day on Saturday, March 19. Open studios and artists’ talks offer London audiences a unique opportunity to see, hear about and discuss the research and work-in-progress that these artists have been developing over the past three months at Gasworks.

Our current residencies are supported by arteBA in partnership with URRA, the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Pro Helvetia and Mercedes Zobel in partnership with Outset.

All events are free to attend.