Souvenier is an assemblage consisting of photographs, modified Polaroids, a postcard and various objects in a labelled wooden vitrine. While the combination of various objects from her house in Carinagasse, Feldkirch, can be interpreted as a Gesamtkunstwerk, this arrangement gives the impression of conscious retrospection. While looking at the contents prompts certain associations, they are not immediately apparent, as if the idea were to remind the viewer of self-induced, personal events
or perceptions – or to leave them to be interpreted by future generations. As if in a game of showing and hiding, some aspects of Jehle’s (artistic) biography are evident. On the bottom shelf, for example, her list of exhibitions as a rolled-up stack of paper or, at the upper right, Jehle’s first edition, Play Sand (1968), published
by Wolfgang Feelisch’s Vice-Verlag in Remscheid, Germany. In the 1980s, Jehle mainly worked with instant cameras; accordingly, the vitrine features numerous Polaroids, which she often manipulated during or after the development process. Central themes of her artistic inquiry, such as the self-as-child, the notion of Heimat or home(land), heteronormative gender roles, the Catholic church, domesticity, pregnancy and, later, spirituality and transience, are manifested in this artwork.
Leslie Ospelt
