Venus in Scorpio

"Loving Venus in Scorpio is like loving a creature who wants desperately to, but feels as though they must refrain from, eating you alive."

Venus in Scorpio focuses on the history of modern architecture, and its intimate relationship with disease and the home: the domain of the chronically ill and disabled. Using both Le Corbusier's infamous LC4 and LC2 arm and lounge chairs, as well as Youden's own collection of mobility aids and medical devices as a point of departure, Youden offers a reevaluation of these home furnishings — examining how their shared aesthetics are not pure coincidence, but instead a telling of their shared history.

"Modern Architecture, launched in the 1920s by an international group of avant-garde architects, has usually been understood in terms of functional efficiency, new materials (glass, iron, reinforced concrete), new technologies of construction, and the machine aesthetic… In contrast, modern architecture was actually shaped by the dominant medical obsession of its time — tuberculosis — and the technology associated with it: X-rays… We are still living in the architecture shaped by tuberculosis… Modernity was driven by illness. The engine of modern architecture was not a heroic, shiny functional machine — it was disease."

Lauryn Youden (b. 1989, Canada) is a poet, performance and installation artist based in Berlin. Her practice derives from her research in and navigation through the medical industrial complex, colonial medicine, alternative healing practices, and traditional medicine for the treatment of her chronic illnesses and disabilities. In 2016 she was awarded the Berlin Art Prize.

Works:
Beautiful…this is the skin of a killer Bella, 2023
Hot Topic Esoteric Bimbo, 2023
The Fear of Disease, 2023
Bitch I'm a Cow, 2023
But Have You Tried Yoga?, 2023
ACAB ("Mary Kate" Olsen), 2023