Armour, 2017
DISPLAY, Berlin

Individual protections, once made of iron, were meant to defend their owner and improve human capacities. They would shape the body to act as a second layer, define one’s identity and belonging, and maybe, repulse the adversary. From head to toe, covered by her all-in-one, how would Joan of Arc feel wearing her “victorious” harness while marching on Paris?

The inhabitants of an armour chose whether they wanted it to be light and adherent or massive and constructing, either allowing a greater rapidity of movement but with less efficiency or defensive but rigid and heavy, constricting the range of action. In each case, the protection reveals its fragility.

From chainmail to bulletproof vests or tribal face tattoos, the defensive shields made a long way since the heavy overalls and took diverse outlines. Kevlar, polyethylene of molar mass, light metal, ceramic plates or ink; materials and forming varied and evolved regarding mobility and clinging functions to such an extent, that they tend to become imperceptible.

Keegan Luttrell extends this investigation field to other forms of protection or self-defense. Her interest focuses exactly on the invisible armours, involved in a daily context. The ones we wear on facial features or disguised under gestures and behaviors.

Through her analysis and in the exhibition taking place, they become tangible, as to allow a closer observation, as if we could even try them. Face lines converted into ceramic pieces strengthened by fire and shattering if mishandled. These fine bone structures are here engaged in a ritualized course, their brittles taken by fluids and movements, turning back into sediments, as the objects are activated by their dissolution.

-Marie DuPasquier

Activation: by Keegan Luttrell, Paul Polaris and Estafania Campillo.

Photos by Josh Wolf and CHROMA

Armour

First Students, 2016 
C-Prints.

First Students is a series of portraits that depicts teenage girls wearing a ceramic golden cage. The subjects in these photographic works are the students that artist taught for two years at a boarding school in the Swiss Alps. These students come from all over the world to this institution, Russia, Mexico, China, Saudi Arabia, and South America in order to be protected from their inherited privilege, yet they still live the lives of the average teenager. This series attempts to shed light on the issues and pressures that young women face when isolated from society. 

First Students

Erasure (performance), 2015.

Through a series of performances in three parts, one’s relationship to time when removed from the outside world is enacted. Firstly through the performative and healing act of breathing, subsequently through the sweeping of a broken hourglass that is transported and methodically arranged in the space. In the third and final act, structural images are removed from panes of glass. The performances act as a healing and cleansing ritual in which the performer grapples with their psychological state.  

Video by Maximillian Conway

Photos by Marina Belikova and Richard Berger

Erasure

Seamstress, 2016.
Seamstress is a performance that invites participants to cut white oxford cloth shirts and attach it to the performer’s body with sewing pins, creating a collaborative garment, all the while clothing the subject. The performer and the participant experience shared emotions - vulnerability and discomfort - through relinquishing control within the collaboration. This exchange prompts an inherent physical risk to the performer while also placing a responsibility on the participant. The performer acts as a mirror that confronts the question of what it means to be vulnerable - and how does this act become a shared emotional experience. Will the roles between the performer and audience create an unwritten relationship of trust and empathy through the exchange or will the risk pose a threat to the performer?  By practicing being vulnerable and opening up the possibility of pain, the situation also leads to a heightened state of awareness between both the performer and participant.

 

Photos by Kim Schneider, Fabio Mota and Maximillian Conway

Seamstress

In this performance an invisible wall is created using multiple strands of transparent monofilament line horizontally stretched from one side of the room to another. The performer remains trapped on one side and the audience remains on the other. This separation might not be visible to the naked eye as the monofilament line is transparent. On the side of the wall that the performer exists, black ink is painted onto the string. As the performer tries to engage with the wall, marks left from the wall are then transferred onto the body. The body of the performer acts as a stamp, pressing against the invisible wall and then placing their body onto a physical wall in the space. The inherent residue that remains as a result of penetrating the wall directly, emulates the way marginalisation and separatism create a lasting universal impact long after a wall has been erected. The act itself ritualistically and rhythmically exists as the body forces an interaction with the invisible wall repeatedly until it can no longer hold the individual breaking through to the other side.

For video documentation, please contact. 

Indivisible

For the final exhibition in 2019, Centrum is happy to present Berlin based artist Keegan Luttrell with her exhibition For Joan. In her sculptural and performative work, the artist examines two different explorations of the meaning of armour, one that explores a narrative where armour fuses with the body to create a singular entity, highlighting the implications of this action, while the other perceives armour as a metaphor for building something that does not exist.

The title of the exhibition was inspired by the iconic figure Jeanne d'Arc – Joan of Arc – who led the French army to war against England in the 1430s, but who finally experienced how her male allies turned against her after several defeats, and sold her to the opponents. In 1431, d'Arc was put on trial. After a short process, she was burned at the stake as a witch. After a revision process to restore her honour by Charles VII in 1455, as well as her beatification in 1909, d’Arc is one of France’s national heroines.

The artist has created three works for the exhibition; all draw their inspiration from the story of Joan of Arc. She examines in which way the protection of the self becomes a symbolic element of power, and also when it becomes obsolete. Entering the exhibition space, the visitor is first confronted with the end of Joan of Arc: Skin Deep is a piece of skin that has merged with chain mail. It is impaled by a stake that brutally holds it against the black wall. In this work, Luttrell reflects on the meaning of armor as part of our identity: For Joan of Arc, armor was a necessary part that veiled her female identity in a masculine dominated environment and a sign of strength and power. In the end, it was her belief in her mission and her identity that led her to be condemned to death.

Opposite the entrance is the installation Dust. It consists of four armoured clay arms with vessels of water hovering above them. In the run of the exhibition, the water will slowly drip down onto them and the clay will dissolve. The gesture of decay might first recall the end of Joan of Arc, but moreover, the artist questions what happens when we remove our armour and thus the stiff façade that we maintain in public for our own protection. Are the consequences purely negative or can we not also benefit from the revelation of our vulnerable side?

 In the video work For Joan the artist herself takes the part of Jeanne d'Arc and shows in a sensitive portrait her own interpretation of her life story. The work first shows moments of healing and peace, in which Jeanne's armour is removed. This is interrupted by an intense intermezzo, in which betrayal and death by fire are depicted in an intense visual language. For Joan, the removal of the armor becomes a necessary step to wash her defenceless body from the traces of the past.

Text by Max Weiland, Photos by Ute Klein and courtesy of the artist. 

For Joan

Luttrell’s work explores past and present methods and means of protection -  specifically through the symbol of medieval armour, layering the visible and invisible.  Luttrell’s photo transfer prints question the defensibility of the body protected inside. What armours do we prepare for ourselves in the modern world to protect us, while also tending to the sacredness of the body underneath?

This series of prints was intended to be shown alongside a video work at an upcoming group exhibition, "Don't Touch Me", curated by Rosie Reed. The exhibition was to showcase 14 artists showing a vast array of work as well as accessible prints in a pop-up location in London.

Inside Armour

Untitled (Milk Mountain) 

2016 

Untitled (Milk Mountain) is a film that depicts a young woman’s struggle to carry a bowl of milk up a mountain situated in the Alps near Leysin, Switzerland. Wearing a white dress and walking barefoot, the protagonists’ harrowing journey to reach the peak of the mountain serves as a ritual for healing, transformation and reckoning. Drawing inspiration from the local folklore from the town, the milk signifies the sacrifice that farmers would leave out for the “fairies” that protected their crops and them from the harsh conditions of the mountain. The town, rich in history - from housing patients suffering from tuberculosis to becoming a winter tourist destination - creates a stage that is lost in time, as the landscape contrasts with the woman who is oddly, hypnotically determined to bring the milk to its final resting place. In the end her journey culminates with the evidence of her struggles found in the deterioration of her clothes and the relinquishing of what she has protected throughout her journey. 

 

Cinematography by Maximillian Conway and Fabio Mota

Untitled (Milk Mountain)

Seamstress is a performance that invites participants to cut white oxford cloth shirts and attach it to the performer’s body with sewing pins, creating a collaborative garment, all the while clothing the subject. The performer and the participant experience shared emotions - vulnerability and discomfort - through relinquishing control within the collaboration. This exchange prompts an inherent physical risk to the performer while also placing a responsibility on the participant. The performer acts as a mirror that confronts the question of what it means to be vulnerable - and how does this act become a shared emotional experience. Will the roles between the performer and audience create an unwritten relationship of trust and empathy through the exchange or will the risk pose a threat to the performer?  By practicing being vulnerable and opening up the possibility of pain, the situation also leads to a heightened state of awareness between both the performer and participant.

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Keegan Luttrell