Agnes

Homemade, with texts embroidered jacket,
Garn auf Anstaltsleinen, Rückenlänge 36,5cm (Inv.Nr. 743) Institute yarn on linen, back length 36.5 cm (Inv 743)


A jacket, made of coarse gray cloth, as it was used for prison clothes, is embroidered all over with colored yarn. Neck and shoulder are trimmed with brown fabric. The jacket is designed for a petite female body shape.The outside of the sleeve was sewn to the inside of the bodice, so that there is no consistent interior and exterior. . In one, all-over 'passes through the colored yarn and the cloth is on the surface can be clearly seen that they are writing. Is the writing on the sleeves out to read. . Otherwise it is read only on the inside, close to the skin. . It is difficult to identify a starting point and a reading of the text, or even clearly to distinguish between the rows. Again and again, select "I" or "mine" the beginning of a new sentence.. Sun can be read on the left sleeve, "My Jacket", and "with my white socks / stockings to be my 11", or inside the top left: "My dress," center "is my jacket," or bottom right: " I'm not in the "and" I'm in Hubertusburg / ground floor, including something like a signature: "95 AD / AIB, indicating that judges have completed the jacket 1895th "stitches in all linen and clothing are reminders of her life." The many embroidered data confirm this, it is said, for example, on the inside of the left spandrel: "19 Juni 73 b." The few legible words are intriguing. Wer war Agnes Richter? Who was Agnes judge? "Kinder" steht an einer Stelle. "Children" is in one place. Hatte sie Kinder? Did she have children? "Meine Schwester" und "Bruder Freiheit?" "My Sister" and "brother of Freedom?" offenbaren, dass sie Geschwister hatte. reveal that she had siblings. Von "Forschung" und von einer "Köchin" ist die Rede. Retrieved from "research" and a "Chef" is mentioned. . What was important to her? "Cherries" and elsewhere "no cherries, and then the constant references to clothing. Very personal things are here transferred to the second skin. . Nevertheless, Judge Agnes and her story remain hidden in the ceaseless flow of hard to read on and dive yarn. The thread runs through the fabric as Ariadne's thread the labyrinth. In Greek mythology, Ariadne's thread of the rescue from the labyrinth, the guarantor of the survival and return to society. What function will enroll the thread on this jacket?

It is doubtful that the embroidered words refer only to the past. The frequency of identitätsbezeichnenden word "I" and the possessive pronouns suggests a different argument. Gisela Steinlechner indicates language - the written or embroidered word - as a structuring. Add is that the structure-function of the letter of a fundamental nature, ie any structured experience, stop giving, distance permits as well as a self-assurance and localization. The experience relates to the present, and so the repeated choking letter "I" and "My relates" to the presence of the letter which indicates in one place is a readable "you" also to an imagined addressee of the letter. The writing is even on the presence of the maker of this jacket (also referred inside reads: "My jacket is" elsewhere: "1894 I am / I am today) Fraulein." It is opposite to the prison life, who by his humiliating situations, interference with privacy, which leads through the loss of personal belongings, one's own clothes self-denigration and loss of identity. Demonstration. Agnes Judge embroiders the other hand, "I", "I am," "I". She embroiders these words and she wears it on the skin, more to the self-assurance as to the demonstration. Document is the inversion of the inner and outer sides of the jacket, so that the writing remains safe inside. On the outside of the sleeve is the word "asylum doctors." . Remains hidden from the context, it is significant.
The demonstrative use of female handicraft techniques for assurance of his own existence is a strategy that finds particular use in contemporary art. Agnes Richter created a dense textual web, which she dresses. It has the function to show something and make visible to decorate, but also to protect, to ward off the impending disappearance of identity. The jacket by Agnes Richter is extraordinary, not just asylum jacket. . Thus Judge Agnes is a character, retains an identity: She is different, it is peculiar and special. Yet still the number 583 - the number with their clothes for the laundry has been marked - not just stamped, but hand-stitched everywhere apparent on the jacket. . Obviously part of the preservation of the identity in the institution and to accept the stigma of being a number: 583 in Hubertusburg.

Viola Michely, Projektmitarbeiterin zur Ausst. Viola Michely, project assistant for the exh. "Irre ist weiblich" "Astray is female"

Aus: Irre ist weiblich. From: insane female. Künstlerische Interventionen von Frauen in der Psychiatrie um 1900, Ausstellungskatalog Sammlung Prinzhorn, hg. Artistic interventions of women in psychiatry in 1900, exhibition catalog Prinzhorn Collection, ed. von Bettina Brand-Claussen und Viola Michely, Heidelberg 2004, S. 146. by Bettina Brand-Claussen, Viola Michely, Heidelberg 2004, p. 146