Silvia Kolbowski - what was the right answer

what was the right answer

1980

Installed in a hallway at Artist's Space that included many doorways to offices and bathrooms,

this project played on the well-known linguistic and psychoanalytic notion that sexuality can be

affected by something as mundane as the sign on a toilet door. Three-photograph groupings, behind

glass and on small shelves, punctuated the walls of the hallway, showing a mother and child in

different poses and clothing (male and female). The title is drawn from Portrait of the Artist as a

Young Man, by James Joyce, inclining the project toward an examination of the Oedipal complex.

Photos on the shelves were of women posed wearing translucent male and female masks.

Eight panels with shelves; seven units including three photographs each; one unit including two photographs.

Edition of 1. what was the right answer...is in the collection of: Sammlung Hoffmann, Berlin.

Publications:

"In Lieu of Essence," by Joan Copjec, Block 7, 1982 [Contact artist for copy.]
"what was the right answer," by David Shapiro, New York Arts Journal (March 1982)