Henrike Naumann makes installations that incorporate used furniture and other interior decor alongside sculpture, painting, and video to articulate how political ideologies and power relations inform our everyday environments. PROTO NATION combines design codes from 1990s East Germany and South Korea to transform the museum space into a boutique for a fictitious shoe brand. Employing a somber color scheme throughout, the “store” is wallpapered in a printed concrete pattern, fitted with metal furnishings, and equipped with a monitor looping a mock PROTO NATION advertisement. Also on display are thirty-six sculptures made by modifying commercially available shoes with unusual materials, such as ceramic salt and pepper shakers. Perched on plinths and shelving racks, these eccentric creations—such as two shoes tied together with an oversized belt, or shoes stuffed with garish fur where the feet would go—are at once peculiar and amusing. The eclectic joining of disparate materials here suggests itself as a visualization of the meeting, or forced unification, of incongruous partners.
