VERY IMPORTANT PERSON (2002)

"Very Important Person" is a suit made of dish towels, a necklace made from a ladle, and a purse in Louis Vuitton design made of plastic bags from the supermarket. On their own, suits, dish towels, necklaces, ladles, purses and shopping bags are signs that we decode and perceive instantly. The coupling of mixed signals in "Very Important Person" complicates the decoding process, as the signs can no longer be read and perceived in a straightforward and unreflected manner but require active interpretation. "Very Important Person" is open to interpretation and also addresses the very act of decoding objects.

"Very Important Person" plays with the clash of two female stereotypes: the career woman and the housewife, and the object can be seen as a reflection on the fact that housewives, in the classic sense, have ceased to exist – "Very Important Person" suggests that the housewife’s traditional tools of the trade have become obsolete and taken on new, more contemporary roles. "Very Important Person" can also be viewed as a critical comment on the predominance of work outside the home in defining our identity and determining whether we feel valuable and successful. Finally, "Very Important Person" can be seen as an illustration of the challenge felt by many modern women of living up to the demands and expectations of having a successful career on the one hand and a proper home on the other.

The necklace was in 2006 part of Crafts Collection CC11 in a slightly revised version called neckLadle.