Two hands that precisely and methodically fold napkins: A daily
movement until the fold becomes more and more narrow,
multiplied until it cannot get any smaller, each fold stiffening the
previous one in an attempt to regulate the fabric, to get rid of each
irregularity and to compress each thread.
In Dominique Hurth’s work unfoldings, this simple movement becomes a gesture to translate the aryanization of the department store Grünfeld. Methodical, calculated and precise, the organised exclusion of non-Aryans from business life in Nazi Germany started with the Nürnberger Laws and the Aryan Paragraph and was eventually fully regulated by decree in 1938. Businesses were transferred to Jewish non-owners and the proceeds were taken by the state. That same year the owners of Grünfeld were forced to sell their well-known stores significantly below the market price. Grünfeld in deutschem Besitz illustrated the change of ownership with a woman advertising a pile of folded napkins.
Unfoldings quotes both the advertisement and Gründfeld’s aryanization, while more generally focusing on the precise metho- dology induced by the Nazis as a simple and daily, yet brutal and violent, handling of fabric within two hands.
In Dominique Hurth’s work unfoldings, this simple movement becomes a gesture to translate the aryanization of the department store Grünfeld. Methodical, calculated and precise, the organised exclusion of non-Aryans from business life in Nazi Germany started with the Nürnberger Laws and the Aryan Paragraph and was eventually fully regulated by decree in 1938. Businesses were transferred to Jewish non-owners and the proceeds were taken by the state. That same year the owners of Grünfeld were forced to sell their well-known stores significantly below the market price. Grünfeld in deutschem Besitz illustrated the change of ownership with a woman advertising a pile of folded napkins.
Unfoldings quotes both the advertisement and Gründfeld’s aryanization, while more generally focusing on the precise metho- dology induced by the Nazis as a simple and daily, yet brutal and violent, handling of fabric within two hands.
unfoldings
2013
2-minutes Video in loop and Instructional Poster
Installation Views:
Vitrine on Kurfürstendamm 28,
Berlin September-November 2013
Commissioned within the Berlin theme year «Zerstörte Vielfat 1933 - 1938 - 1945/ Destroyed Diversity 1933-1938-1945», Berliner Senate
2013
2-minutes Video in loop and Instructional Poster
Installation Views:
Vitrine on Kurfürstendamm 28,
Berlin September-November 2013
Commissioned within the Berlin theme year «Zerstörte Vielfat 1933 - 1938 - 1945/ Destroyed Diversity 1933-1938-1945», Berliner Senate
