HAÜSLER, Natalie
Honey

The catalogue for Nathalie Häusler’s solo show, Honey, held at KIT – Kunst im Tunnel, Düsseldorf, in 2018, with text by Natalie Häusler, Matthew Rana, and Anna-Lena Rößne.

The Roman de la Rose, a French epic prose poem originally written in the Middle Ages, forms the starting point for Honey. The text was very popular in its time and also inspired one of the first documented forms of feminist literary criticism: Christine de Pizan’s Querelle du Roman de la Rose. The plot includes a long dream that takes place in a walled (pleasure) garden and offers an introduction to the art of courtly love through elaborate allegories, in which the rose stands for female sexuality. Allegorical figures in the artist’s work represent a contemporary transcription and transformation of texts that she encountered in her literary research. (For instance, the title of the exhibition refers both to a work by the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan and to the poem The Honey Bear by Eileen Myles.)

Published by KIT, 2018
Exhibition Catalogues