Girls' School Installation/ Florida Serial Killer

Girls’ School
2015
Allison Kotzig

Girls’ School is a site- specific, travelling installation focusing attention on the overwhelming and systemic nature of the culture of misogyny. As girls, as women, we are continually educated about our worthlessness, our victimhood, our status as petitioners.
Newspaper headlines are amassed in order to show the buildup of not only instances of violence against women, but the nature of the media coverage of it.
The panels are arranged like bricks in a wall, as each instance of recorded violence, gender bias, sexual and workplace harassment build into the wall keeping women out and down. The panels occasionally fall, symbolizing victory over oppression. A child’s school desk is situated in the middle of the installation to allow viewers to sit and contemplate the effect of years of learning about how to treat girls and women is internalized.
The nature of media coverage of violence against women is also examined in the series Florida Serial Killer, which is presented in installation with Girls’ School.



Girls’ School
2015
Allison Kotzig

Girls’ School is a site- specific, travelling installation focusing attention on the overwhelming and systemic nature of the culture of misogyny. As girls, as women, we are continually educated about our worthlessness, our victimhood, our status as petitioners.
Newspaper headlines are amassed in order to show the buildup of not only instances of violence against women, but the nature of the media coverage of it.
The panels are arranged like bricks in a wall, as each instance of recorded violence, gender bias, sexual and workplace harassment build into the wall keeping women out and down. The panels occasionally fall, symbolizing victory over oppression. A child’s school desk is situated in the middle of the installation to allow viewers to sit and contemplate the effect of years of learning about how to treat girls and women is internalized.
The nature of media coverage of violence against women is also examined in the series Florida Serial Killer, which is presented in installation with Girls’ School.



Girls’ School
2015
Allison Kotzig

Girls’ School is a site- specific, travelling installation focusing attention on the overwhelming and systemic nature of the culture of misogyny. As girls, as women, we are continually educated about our worthlessness, our victimhood, our status as petitioners.
Newspaper headlines are amassed in order to show the buildup of not only instances of violence against women, but the nature of the media coverage of it.
The panels are arranged like bricks in a wall, as each instance of recorded violence, gender bias, sexual and workplace harassment build into the wall keeping women out and down. The panels occasionally fall, symbolizing victory over oppression. A child’s school desk is situated in the middle of the installation to allow viewers to sit and contemplate the effect of years of learning about how to treat girls and women is internalized.
The nature of media coverage of violence against women is also examined in the series Florida Serial Killer, which is presented in installation with Girls’ School.





The Florida Serial Killer series deals with many ideas, some of them competing. The first has to be prurience. Its prevalence in American society dominated by Puritanistic attitudes toward sex and especially towards the idea of a woman’s sexuality. Because this sexuality is not fully accepted, it becomes a topic which must be approached surreptitiously. Violence is one way to witness female sexuality without acknowledging desire. This makes the news coverage of sexual violence against women take on its dominant tone of prurience.
Another topic is the idea of Trophies. The artist has reduced the wide-ranging idea of Trophies to that of Vaginas as Trophies. Women are reduced to their genitalia in this artwork, reflecting the reductive nature of American mainstream culture.
This series is also a reflection of the fascination with sexual violence and serial killers. The hidden logistics of the crime become totems; body dump sites, method of finding and stalking victims, photographs of the cars used to transport the bodies, how to keep the victims from being heard or seen before, during and after the crime.
The frames are bourgeois, too pat, almost kitsch which reflects the essentially pedestrian, unimaginative nature of the serial killer with his tedious hatred of women.
The nail, obviously, acknowledges the violence done and is, of course, also a pun, highlighting the undercurrent of violence running below discussion of sexual conquests.
Cheap wood paneling was specifically used in order to bring to mind creepy 70s/80s basements where the rapes and murders of these faceless women could take place. The faces of the women are burned out with cigarettes, also reflecting the prevalence of smoking during the 70s/80s culture, as well as highlighting the depersonalization of the women victims. The burning of the faces also reflects the burning hatred of women displayed by the serial killer, who often seeks to obliterate the identities of his victims in shame.
Polaroids were specifically used as many killers like to keep mementos of their crimes but need to avoid detection. The use of polaroids shares this with child porn and many other illegal sexual activities where repeated reliving of the crime is essential to the perpetrator and his audience. With polaroids, there is no danger of being discovered by a nosy photo lab technician. Additionally, it is in keeping with the 70s/80s aesthetic brought about by the use of the wood paneling.
All of this above, however, almost takes a back seat to the reality that violence has a sexualized component that cannot be denied, no matter how unpleasant is the realization.