Brigitte Niedermair’s solo exhibition at the Museo di Palazzo Mocenigo is a dynamic interplay of the artist’s photographs – drawn from her archive of over twenty years of photographic practice – with the architecture and décor of the interconnected rooms of Palazzo Mocenigo.

Working with international photography curator Charlotte Cotton, Niedermair has responded to the distinct atmosphere of each room, and inserted her hallmark tableaux fashion and still life photographs into these historic environments that range from intimate to imposing scale. The synergy between the public and once-private interiors of this historic Mocenigo family palazzo – Venice’s Museum of fabrics and costume since 1985 – and Niedermair’s photographs is multilayered, with a tenor that shifts from room to room. Niedermair selected paintings from the Palazzo Mocenigo collection for de-installation, replacing them with her photographs to consciously amplify and counterargue with the embedded subtexts of gender and identity that permeate these predominantly 17th century interiors. The installation viewer gradually becomes aware that the only portrayed women that look out of the confines of their frames date from the 17th and 18th centuries, while their contemporary counterparts resist and turn away.

Niedermair’s intervention at the Museo di Palazzo Mocenigo re-animates the interiors and the narratives of gender that they hold. The exhibition is accompanied by Niedermair’s survey book Me and Fashion, published by Damiani Editore, which creates further context to the artist’s ongoing visual commentary on the representation of women and the meaning of fashion. Niedermair is an exceptional figure within the field of fashion image-making as both a female auteur and one who activates her female gaze within a male dominated image system.