Out & About interviews Janna Banning about the digital feminist exhibition project MoPA. In the interview, the artistic director of the “Museum of Pink Art” provides insights into the projects’ concept, explains how the specific floor plan of the museum came about, and why pink is actually so damn expensive.

 

“Pink is political, pink provokes, pink polarises, yet pink comes across as so dreamy. Perhaps pink is even the most complicated colour of all. In any case, it is the most expensive.”

states the website of MOPA, which opened on January 29, 2022 its digital doors. The museum is entirely dedicated to the myths and politics of the color “pink”. What is particularly special about this is that the project team, consisting of Janna Banning, Marie Donike, Florian Gubernator and Darius Tödtmann, have transferred the exhibition entirely into the digital space and let visitors explore the museum rooms from their own digital devices.

Asking Janna Banning about her associations with pink and rose, she initially resists answering, because that is precisely what MoPA criticizes: simple, stereotypically charged clichés about a color that has been socially instrumentalized and ideologically charged over decades. Until the beginning of the 20th century, “little red” was still considered the color of battle and thus supposedly perfectly suited for boys, while girls were supposed to adorn themselves with the light blue of St. Mary. Today, it is unspokenly crystal clear who should reach for the pink water bottle or the rose candy in the supermarkets – pink has been corrupted, by capitalism and the consuming industry, but still serves as a projection surface for role structures and gender clichés that were believed to be outdated. 

MoPA follows the claim to “break down the stereotypes and show the whole universe of a color,” as Banning says. Her associations with the colors oscillate between poetry and empowerment: pink appears as political, punky and popular and rose as snotty, dreamy and sometimes sad, the little red as big and strong.

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Out & About: MoPA was created as a collective collaboration, how long have you been working together?

Janna Banning: It is the first joint work in this combination and we were quite flashed ourselves how well the team complements each other.

“First and foremost, curiosity, questions, wonder. Also: passion, feminism, activism and some megalomania.”

Where did the motivation for the project come from?

First and foremost, curiosity, questions, wonder. Also: passion, feminism, activism and some megalomania.

Why a digital exhibition – also a reaction to the pandemic?

Maybe it would have been created even without the pandemic, that would be much preferable to us anyway. In any case, the work on Pink started before the pandemic. But under these circumstances, it’s of course extra nice that you can also go to the museum when art spaces are closed, when you’re sitting in your home office during your lunch break or in quarantine and can’t get out of the door, and anyway also hungover on Saturdays at noon at the breakfast table and so on… We then of course thought about that, with the idea of making a museum visit possible for as many people as possible.

We had a huge desire to expand the digital space. Also because we were a bit bored by the digital exhibitions that opened during Corona and thought: “There must be a better way! There must be a better way!
But then we were surprised ourselves that the exhibition directly turned into a whole museum.

How did the floor plan of the museum come about?

The floor plan was created according to the individual pink rooms or shades of pink. Each room was given the perfect shape for the content shown. That means we designed the museum especially for the pink collection. It has six halls on two floors, a foyer and a museum store.

“We had a huge desire to expand the digital space.”

How do you see the role of the visitors in this digital framework?

Our idea was to make the exhibition accessible to as large an audience as possible, so we made sure from the beginning that it would not only run smoothly on the latest computers, but that it would be bilingual and easy to use, so that you don’t have to be a professional gamer to walk through the exhibition. Of course it is open 24 hours! But above all, we want visitors to have fun, discover a lot, experience Rosa from different or new perspectives, and splash around with the dolphins.

Is there an analog program as well?

Yes, there is a printed exhibition catalog that is part of the whole artwork as well. In the catalog, the exhibition expands again. There are also Rosa Parks and Rosa Luxemburg gingerbread hearts as coloring sheets in the catalog, a recipe for the pink protein shake for healthy muscle building, lots of background information about the individual shades of pink, and knitting instructions. It’s a quite nice book, so to speak!

Where do you encounter Pink in your life?

Everywhere! In Kendall Jenner’s living room, in the prison, underwater, in the drugstore, sometimes the sushi rice is pink due to beetroot juice, quite extremely in children’s sections at stores, or at the train station in the magazine store – for the girls everything is in barbie-pink and sugarcotton-pink with glitter, it’s like a pink wall that you run into.

And where do you run into pink?

Why actually is pink so expensive?

FCK CAPITALISM! It’s gender pricing. In Germany it is also called „Rosa Steuer“ (Pink Tax). You’ll find all about it on the box office tape (room 6 in the museum) and much more from p.90 in the exhibition catalog.

Will the MoPA continue?

Absolutely. It will start in spring, when the MoPA will be an analogue guest in Dresden.

Interview by Catherin Schöberl