With \u2018Faces \u2013 an exhibition about what we show and what we hide\u2019 the Deutsches Hygiene Museum addresses with its usual precision a topic that we all recognise and one that can be delved into at will. When the exhibition was no more than a concept on paper, the burka debate was already making clear the essential role played by the face and facial expressions in human communication \u2013 and it provided the contemporary setting for the curator Kathrin Meyer, who then gave life to the concepts of social scientist Sigrid Weigel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The first part of the exhibition that deals with the assumptions, methods and reasons for the visual representation of individual faces creates at once a network of interlinking connections. Here you will find portraits by the Augsburg Renaissance artist Christoph Amberger, who portrays the merchant David Amberger with such gravitas that it conveys even to those who are not art historians that this is a person who demands respect. There is no muscle movement to lift the corner of his mouth, to lower an eyebrow or in any way to distract from the seriousness of his business.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Renaissance is generally seen as the awakening of the individual; the Reformation gave people yet another reason to concern themselves with human-based religion and in that way to encounter different ways of celebrating their belief in God. Considerations that must have strengthened the self-awareness of citizens.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Or is it the tiring sessions spent posing for artists which at the end leave faces looking as though they have been petrified that is to blame for the gradual disappearance of all facial expression? Selfie, the 2013 Word of the Year, reveals something about how a new technology can help us achieve a new understanding of ourselves: the ever present need to draw attention to ourselves with a self-portrait is leading to a new form of standardisation. One seldom comes across a selfie where the subject is not deliberately flashing a smile and has not gone into overdrive with their facial expression. Any individuality behind it, however, appears to have been removed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Yet another brilliantly subtle exhibition that uses the surface of something \u2013 in this case the face \u2013 to indirectly tackle a complex range of relationships.<\/p>\n\n\n\n