STARKE FRAUEN (STRONG WOMEN)

NEUER KUNSTVEREIN ASCHAFFENBURG, GERMANY, 2013

The museum exhibition Starke Frauen, was Fowler’s first public exhibition alongside artists Ilse Haider and Nina Nolte. The ‘Knockers’ series was created especially for the exhibition. In the series Fowler explores the fine line between dominance and subservience, strength and fragility, outer appearance and inner struggle that her previous work has touched upon. The knockers are depictions of men, hands bound behind their backs, faces hidden behind masks, twisting and struggling against the chalk backdrop of their host’s chests. Fowler was inspired by pictures of the US Navy Seals in training, plunged under water, they fight towards the surface and survival.

The knockers adorn the women depicted, almost like ornate nipple tassels, weighing them down and drawing our eye to their breasts. There is suddenly an implicit humiliation at play. We are reminded that they are all perceived as sexual objects, and it is this subjection in their public lives that was their downfall in their private lives. The title of the series “Knockers” is not simply a play on words, a witty pun; the artist’s intention runs deeper than that. The title serves to alert us to the complex play between ownership and objectification.