VALIE EXPORT. DIE DOPPELGÄNGERIN

Die Doppelgängerin is a monumental sculpture in bronze, depicting twin pairs of oversized scissors. Unsettling and ambiguous, the object remains open to interpretation. The title draws on the German word for “look-alike” (der Doppelgänger) and the related notion of one’s spiritual companion, the “other self” or “shadow,” as held in popular belief. The idea entered the collective consciousness through Romantic literature, propounded by the eighteenth-century German writer Jean Paul (born Johann Paul Friedrich Richter) who is said to have coined the term, although similar figures had appeared in Scandinavian and Irish cultures too. In the humanities, the concept of a doppelgänger has served to reflect on the duality of human nature, on hidden personality traits, or on complex identities.

 

The piece by VALIE EXPORT features that figure in female form, adding the suffix “-in” to create a new word and a new understanding. Her representation of it is one of a doubled pair of scissors rendered on a grand scale. These can be seen here as the attribute of a seamstress—symbolizing needlework, which is stereotyped as a woman’s chore—but also as the tool used for film editing. Or they possibly refer to physical enhancement, hinting at surgical procedures or trimming. Upscaled to become larger than life, they gain significant symbolic weight which is distributed evenly between violent control (over women’s bodies) and agency (when held in the right hands), while repetition increases their interpretive potential.

 

Erected in downtown Warsaw, the scissors remind us both of the historical horrors of the place and of the real role of women who were pushed to the very margins of social life. At the same time they stand for cutting the ties with the past, marking new beginnings. It is up to us what exactly they’re going to mean—depending on what we do, or fail to do, in the days and years to come.