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Themen:

125
Annette Kelm, Jeans Buttons, 2023

Chapter: Small Right Hand Down - Democracy and Freedom

Information

The material speaks for itself
Annette Kelm belongs to a generation of artists whose work in the early 2000s embodied a particular idea: “Political art” does not necessarily have to address or symbolize “content,” that is, opinions, historical facts, or theories, in a realistic way. It can also be abstract and entirely sober, conveying a political or cultural stance without obvious commentary, solely through formal decisions, specific materials, and design. The material and the form speak for themselves.

Everyday and ephemeral objects
In her photographic practice, Kelm examines the sociocultural history embedded in objects, design, and industrial products. Through photographs of everyday and ephemeral objects, from books written by victims of Nazi persecution to industrial materials and garments, she reveals how the world of things is shaped by historical, political, and economic forces.

Typologies
Her approach is based on formal precision and conceptual rigor. In her work, Kelm is interested in the function of objects and in the way they are represented, in typologies. She often uses series of images featuring individual motifs in order to combine a wide range of artistic, historical, and intercultural references.
Jeans Buttons is part of a small series of works that always depicts the same detail of a blue denim jacket. Each work presents a different constellation of historical buttons with political statements attached to the front of the garment: the peace sign, the yin-yang symbol, and political messages such as “Keep Abortion Legal,” “International Women’s Day, 8 March 1975,” “Human Rights,” or “Have a Gay Day.”

Absorbed by mass culture
The series has a nostalgic quality, much like the buttons themselves, which evoke the hippie era and the women’s rights, peace, and gay rights movements. Yet through their combination and repetition, a sense of distance also emerges—a kind of disillusionment, almost approaching banality. Jeans Buttons reminds us of the importance of activist gestures in everyday life. At the same time, it points to how these gestures were absorbed and marketed by mass culture as expressions of lifestyle and identity, while the hard-won rights of the past are once again being rolled back with the rise of authoritarian systems.


Audio

Note: The audio transcription is voiced by an AI.

Annette Kelm, Jeans Buttons, 2023
Photograph
© Annette Kelm. Courtesy Esther Schipper, Berlin/Paris/Seoul. Photo: Roman März
Sammlung Deutsche Bank

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