BATTLE:
RELOADED
by Margret Eicher

Art Museum Moritzburg Halle presents BATTLE:RELOADED, a solo show by Margret Eicher, a German contemporary artist known for her impressive large scale tapestries. The exhibition consists of 19 works that trace Eicher’s artistic trajectory throughout the past 20 years. The eponymous central piece, a 30 meter long textile work, was produced by the artist especially for this exhibition. 

This epic cloth was inspired by one of the most remarkable pictorial monuments of the High Middle Ages —The Bayeux Tapestry. The 70 meter long embroidered work, commissioned to celebrate William of Normandy’s conquest of England, is replete with meticulous depictions and thoughtful iconography. Like the work that inspired it, BATTLE:RELOADED offers a detailed visualization of contemporary culture based on the struggles and antagonisms of our time. In her vivid narrative, Margret Eicher intertwines utopian fantasies with dystopian nightmares to examine the impact of digitalization —both as a tool for global democratization and a mechanism of rigorous control. 

Eicher’s pictorial polyrealms are inhabited by celebrities, real and fictitious. Julian Assange and the Ninja Turtles; Lady Gaga and Lara Croft; Heath Ledger and King Kong; these figures interplay in an immaterial dream dimension. BATTLE:RELOADED can also be seen as an archive of the artist’s previous themes and narratives. Core fragments and characters have been borrowed from her earlier tapestries —some of which are present in the current exhibition. A science fiction fantasy about teleportation, repeated here in a scene with Lady Gaga, originates in the 2018 tapestry It’s a Digital World 1. The figure of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, standing in a nonchalant James Dean pose, deliberately echoes the 2020 work Agent Assange, dedicated to the victims of systemic power's hunger for self-preservation. The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles made their first appearance in the tapestry Then we take Berlin (2018), in which they pose surrounded by blooming nature; the building rising in the background is Berlin’s Teufelsberg or Devil’s mountain where a dilapidated U.S. listening station used during the Cold War is located. 

While protesters, hackers and immigrants are depicted realistically, power structures are personified by plastic toys. Armed Lego soldiers, which pop up repeatedly throughout the 30m tapestry, symbolize an eternal return of organized violence. The death of King Kong, captured by omnipresent paparazzi, embodies the archaic elemental power of nature being annihilated by human ignorance. As the digital pseudo-narrative unfolds, the allegorical background alters drastically: cosmic dreamscapes give way to ancient pyramids; futuristic panoramas of brutalist architecture devolve into banal high-rise buildings of a suburban milieu; and Teufelsberg turns into a surveillance center for American airspace.  Aztec architecture recurs in the tapestry as a symbol of an advanced civilization: in the final scene we find the pyramids destroyed. 

Margret Eicher elaborates multiple framing devices for her iconographic epic. The lower border makes direct reference to the Bayeux tapestry, abridging the historical distance between the narrative strategies of the Middle Ages and the fragmented narratives of modernity. The upper border is adorned with quotes from Michel Foucault, Yvonne Hofstetter, Kathrin Fahlenbrach and Miriam Meckel, who reflect upon universality, existing power structures, and new collective experiences caused by the process of digitization. Another conceptual frame is built into the narrative by the repetitive elements from video games. The casual appearance of a computer game menu bar and a digital controller held by the anonymous hands lends a voyeuristic touch, provoking an eerie sensation of being watched and manipulated. 

Based on free association, Eicher’s pictorial saga draws upon the seemingly inexhaustible reservoir of contemporary mass media, juxtaposing media-hyped characters with elements from art history. Digital images realized through traditional weaving techniques obtain the texture, volume and depth of a three-dimensional textile object. BATTLE:RELOADED, an homage to the eleventh century legendary chronicle, is a remarkable textile epic, the like of which has rarely been seen since the Middle Ages.In this context, the choice of Moritzburg castle as an exhibition space takes on an evident symbolic importance: heroic battles merit grand scenery.