HOT MESS 2021
Installation
Ceramics, Aluminium, Acrylic Glass, Rhinestones, Wood
Shown in "A Guide to Softer Ware", Duo Show with Vera van de Seyp at soft power, Berlin, Germany, 2021
A Guide To Softer Ware is a collaborative exploration of contemporary and not-so-contemporary languages of instruction in the context of “womanhood”, calling out their binary notions of gender designation as a social construct. Through analysing their own behavior as socialised women, and simultaneously analysing guides by women addressing other women about how to be a woman, Charlotte Rohde and Vera van de Seyp expose the idea of the manual as a (self-)imposed directive, trapped between the imperative to be unconditionally affirmed and the need to be in charge of one’s own narrative.
The format of the manual is used here as a rhetorical construct that explores how the social roles of women have been impacted by the rise of new technologies from the second half of the 20th century until now. With their shared background ranging from (type-)design to creative coding, Charlotte Rohde and Vera van de Seyp (quite literally) deconstruct and reprogramme these languages of instruction: From the wording used in 1960s technical manuals for sewing machines, knitting machines and various domestic appliances addressing women as a new target group to Memes and YouTube tutorials as a phenomenon representing the contemporary internet culture of self-optimization.
With their Guide To Softer Ware the two artists reflect on the supposed need for guidance and the forms this guidance has historically taken and still takes. The exhibition at soft power presents new works by the two artists that may function as a manual for the spectators and simultaneously as type specimens. The use of tools and typography, soap and metal, software and code (and ultimately, the use of the body itself), invites us to question the „softness“ historically/conventionally/subconsciously assigned to certain materials and spaces, to gender and its construction.
In her work HOT MESS 2021, Charlotte explores the idea of 2021 womanhood through niche internet culture, thinking about Naomi Osaka and Britney Spears, who dared to become human under the public eye. Machine-produced and hand-treated, HOT MESS 2021 performs a self-fetishisation to reclaim its body and emotionality from the public gaze.
Poster for Tomasz Skibicki and Mirjam Walter at Kunstbunker Nürnberg, 2021
WORK IN PROGRESS
Soft Power New Edge ™: Variable Typeface with 8 Masters/3 Axes for Berlin-based feminist project space soft power.
No Applause until I say so ;)
Installation, YouTube Videos (5/7 minutes)
Ceramics, Iron, Acrylic Glass, Silk
Shown in "I Swear, Time Passed", Group Show at De Dood/Het Hem, Zaandam, Netherlands; 2020
Charlotte Rohde is a ShyPerformanceArtist™, working her way from the outside in: from the use of tools that are distant, not-so-distant, to finally the use of her body itself. As the center point of her practice Charlotte creates typefaces as her own visual voices/external bodies. She uses them to execute the performances she is not ready to perform with her own body. Fascinated by the haptic knowledge her hands rather than her head gained on the body of clay, Charlotte also works with ceramics.
In No Applause until I say so ;), Charlotte explores the physical control and theatrical gestures that are necessary for a “good” performance. Thinking about female gymnasts at the Olympics, who have to be top athletes but also wear stage makeup; thinking about Lady Gaga, who performed for three months with a broken hip; the pieces speak about female performance versus performing femininity.
The YouTube tutorials explain how to create bodies out of one’s own body, giving tips and tricks on how to deal with raw material. Taking care of all our own bodies as an anticapitalist, feminist gesture, as learned on social media.
Somewhere between mainstream internet culture, hydrofeminism, and craft, No Applause until I say so ;) depicts a highly personal longing for unconditional intimacy, never-ending applause and ultimate (self-)control.
Student Council: Visual Identity, custom Type and Website for the Student Council of Gerrit Rietveld Academie and Sandberg Instituut. 2021
defrag Zine: Magazine for feminist_utopist thought experiments. An initiative by Ina Holev, Jolande Hörrmann, Lisa Tracy Michalik & Lan Nguyen, 2020.
Please, use, our, hands,
Rope, Sourdough Bread, Ceramics
Project in collaboration with Andrea González Garrán; Shown in "I Swear, Time Passed", Group Show at De Dood/Het Hem, Zaandam, Netherlands; 2020
Andrea González Gárran and Charlotte Rohde discovered sourdough bread as a medium of communication, a body between their bodies, a space where to come together.
The bread is a way to shape a blurred, entangled story that might have been part of a dream, a line of a fiction, a whispered gossip, an overlooked Instagram-Story or a flashy memory from long-lost misty nights. It also speaks to the quirks of the group, love between friends, glimmering screens in a dark room, long bus rides, car trips, overflowing wine glasses and lots of salty tears.
Please take a bowl, some drops of oil, maybe some salt, and pick the bread that you feel closest too. We wove a spell into this bread – a spell to weave us together – and by sharing it, you will weave the net a little tighter.
SoliType: Fundraising project in support of the people that are currently living under severe and undiginfiying circumstances in European refugee camps. We offer headline typefaces by different designers in exchange for donations to leavenoonebehind2020.org. In collaboration with Vivien Hoffmann, 2020–2021
Marguerite Grotesk for Martin Gropius Bau: Custom version of typeface Marguerite Grotesk for the Berlin-based Museum to be used in their new Corporate Design, 2018.
form follows: “Das Shirt “form follows deeper feelings” ist eine Kooperation von form mit der Schriftgestalterin und Künstlerin Charlotte Rohde. Rohdes Arbeiten zeichnen sich durch einen spielerischen wie politischen Umgang mit Schriften und deren Wirkungsbereichen aus. Ihre Idee (Schrift-)Gestaltung als Verlängerung des Körpers und als feministisches Medium zu begreifen macht sie zu einer der interessantesten aktuellen Gestalterinnen. Design darf funktionslos, aber emotional sein und so eine queere/inklusive Perspektive bedienen, so Rohde. Das Shirt gibt dieser Maxime eine form.”, 2020.
Real Good Studio: Letterlogo for a New York-based Creative Agency, 2020.
Specimen Poster for Kéroïne, Silkscreen on Paper, 2020
Logo for New Dawn, 2020.
We Stepped Into The Light And Our Bodies Caught A Little Fire: Poster for the annual christmas dinner of the Sandberg Institute. Original image by Octave Rimbert-Rivière. Silkscreen, A1, 2019
Club Solidarity: This is not (only) a t-shirt – this is the second round of our non-profit project "support your local dealer". Support creatives, small business owners and people in financial need now who are struggling with the crisis caused by Coronoavirus.
The second edition of the t-shirt is a collaboration with 31 artists who generously created illustrations along the lines of solidarity, communion and equity and sponsored their very own visual response to this ubiquitous crisis. The layout of the t-shirt is inspired by a marathon sponsor shirt, which summarizes the illustrations on the back similar to sponsor logos and therefore emphasizes the artists as the great supporters they are, without whom the second shirt wouldn't have been possible!
Initiated by Deniz Weber, 2020.
Skincare For Unruly Bodies: A Hydro-Drama in Four Acts. Master Thesis at Sandberg Instituut Design Department. Published in form Design Magazine 287, 2020.
Opera Aperta: Catalogue for Düsseldorf-based Artist Rene Hüls, 2018.
Letterings for The Digital Fairy London, 2019.
CUCO Berlin: Webdesign for a Berlin based independent curators' collective, launched 2020
PUB Laboratory for Typographic Embodiment: To create a collaborative research practice, I initiated a research group at the Sandberg Instituut together with Miquel Hervás Gómez and Nicolò Pellarin to create a space for exchange and inspiration of experimental type work. We invite designers from the field to have an external input. 2018-2019.
A Milky Sunbeam
Plaster, Latex; KunstRAI Amsterdam, 2019
Group Show with WOW Amsterdam, in collaboration with Octave Rimbert-Rivière
Type Club Düsseldorf: The Type Club is a curated online platform for type designs and type sketches by students of the University of Applied Sciences Düsseldorf.
Despite the name, it is not an actual club consisting of a defined group of people, but rather a gathering of interested participants across the faculty. The Type Club intends to present said designs in order to initiate dialogue and to participate in the discourse of designers worldwide. The Type Club aims to offer interested people another opportunity to grow through discourse. 2017.
