Annelies Kamen

US, 1988
  • resident
    • 2021 – 2023

Annelies Kamen’s work engages with language and humour, playing with the power dynamics of joke-making.

By employing jokes as an artistic methodology, Kamen allows for the nearly simultaneous apprehension of two conflicting realities to exist in objects and images – creating not just comic objects, but comedian-objects. Comedian-objects are pragmatic, as an object that tells a joke must function with a minimum of fuss. Kamen’s research also encompasses the historiographical exploration of jokes in visual culture. To make a joke, one must voluntarily cede power to an audience, and the comedian must in a sense be able to afford that temporary loss of power. Working from a feminist perspective, Kamen consciously engages with this relationship of power and jokes by freely claiming and relinquishing the power to be pathetic.

Open Archive

Free Lunch, 2020, ice, kosher hot dogs. Courtesy and credit Annelies Kamen.jpg
Free Lunch, 2020, ice, kosher hot dogs

Residents & Alumni Activities

Alumni

Browse through the full archive of our alumni.