Josephine Meckseper

The work of the New York-based German conceptualist, Josephine Meckseper, deals with themes of consumerism and commodity fetishism in modern society. For example, her shop window installations, Shelves , juxtapose fashion accessories with regalia, such as Palesetinian kaffiyeh, taken from left wing protest movements. The connection between consumerism and politics was initially sparked by the confluence of luxury advertising and political news, but Meckseper also does straight politics--she has filmed anti-Bush demonstrations and Berlin protest marches. The resulting work is held in the Saatchi Collection among others, and appeared in the 2006 Whitney Biennial. This monograph, which also features contributions from Okwui Enwezor, Christian Holler and Simone Schimpf, presents a concise overview of Meckseper's visual worlds, in a wide range of video, collage, painting, sculpture and installation. Born in 1964, Meckseper was deemed one of the top ten artists to watch by New York magazine in 1996.