Interview Jenny Konrad

Jenny Konrad interviewed by Hattie Wade during the Graduation Show 2022 at the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague (KABK).

Taylor Ourselves Towards

Graduation project 2021-2022 by Jenny Konrad
Wood installation

Promises of social belonging and upward mobility in exchange for the performance of labour, that will come from the ordinary life of basic employment. That the good life is attainable as long as we just work hard enough. Capitalist culture lures us into this form of reciprocity between good life and labor, feeding a cruel optimism and persuading us to repeat social gestures, even if these are hindering our own flourishing.

As a materialised reflection, Taylor Ourselves Towards translates into an installation our invisible attachment to the fantasy of all these promises, kept alive inside the essential scene of the office. Centring a “skin suit”, Jenny Konrad traces the performative aspects of our ordinary lives as permanent employees. As we tailor our daily existence around a capitalistic assurance, we execute the gestures of being a good worker, in the hope they will get us somewhere. The installation reveals our exposure to the office environment that gets under our skin, moulding us, and how we endure and stay attached to it in spite of how it harms us.

www.jennykonrad.com