At the end of 2017, I had the opportunity to present an exhibition at the now-closed Alina Art Gallery in Leipzig, led by gallerist Dirk Irmscher. The show featured the core of my collection, sharing the same title as the exhibition itself: The Teddybear Theory.
The “third space” room
At that time, I had completed almost all the works in the series, united by a common thread – a glimpse of something I believe to be universal: the moment in childhood when one first encounters their own sexual drive, and begins the gradual process of understanding both the world and oneself in what is known as the “third space.”*
(*The term “third space” – or more commonly transitional space – originates in the psychoanalytic tradition and was coined by Donald Woods Winnicott (1896–1971), a British pediatrician and psychoanalyst. Winnicott described it as a psychological space between the child’s inner world and external reality: a realm of play, creativity, and symbolic meaning where the child learns to cope with separation from the mother and to navigate reality.)
The main motif of the exhibition (and the series) is a teddy bear with a human penis – a provocative combination of toy and sexual organ, representing the objectified sexual desire of a child.
In the exhibition, the child is represented by a small, white-clad (that is, “innocent”) girl from my Crying Women series, captured in the moment of first exploring her own genitals – a situation experienced by every child: so natural, so intimate, so fundamental. The teddy bear is clearly her toy, appearing in many forms throughout the exhibition.
Silkscreen prints (derived from my original drawings I Love You) arranged in a rhythmic sequence of states – flaccid and erect – pulse in the same way as the waves of childhood erotic tension that arrive and which the child instinctively tries to push away (literally, behind her back).
In the exhibition’s “room,” there is also a video of the girl feeding cake to her teddy bear. She wants to share with him, and in her imagination the Bear accepts this pleasure willingly, just like any stuffed toy would.
Beneath this video lies the same teddy bear, now flayed – the girl, ashamed of the pleasure the Bear brought her in her fantasies, has skinned him. His pelt will forever remind her that she managed to tame and suppress her sexuality. And the Bear will never return to seduce her again.
Or perhaps he will – though it’s hard to say whether it will truly be a bear or an adult in a bear costume, someone who does not mean her well, and from whom she will want to protect herself, even if she does not fully understand why. She might place her hands into those lustful paws, believing their promise that nothing bad will happen to her…
Once again, I would like to thank Dirk Irmscher for allowing me to bring this concept to life – it was a great joy to create the entire installation in such a beautiful space.
