Croy Nielsen

P21 project space: 74 Hoenamu-ro, Yongsan-gu, Seoul

Book launch and conversation between Birke Gorm and Pavilion curator Attilia Fattori Franchini co-hosted by Phileas
Monday 1. 9. 2026, 5 PM 

P21 and Croy Nielsen are pleased to announce Birke Gorm’s first solo exhibition in Korea. The exhibition at P21 offers an opportunity to encounter Gorm’s work in Seoul ahead of the Gwangju Biennale, where she will present the evening and the morning and the night in the Austrian Pavilion at the 16^th Gwangju Biennale.

We are also pleased to announce the launch of tales from the attic, the publication accompanying the Austrian Pavilion, alongside a conversation between the artist and Pavillion curator Attilia Fattori Franchini. 

In her ongoing series of jute works, Huswifs (2021–), Birke Gorm focuses on the traditional pocket and examines constructed gender differences in relation to the historical development of men’s and women’s clothing. She draws attention to the ways in which the manufacture, production, and circulation of everyday objects in modern Western societies have contributed to the construction of gendered hierarchies of privilege and restriction.

The Huswifs are based on and named after the term huswif, Middle English for ​“housewife,” which also came to denote a small, portable sewing case containing useful utensils such as needles, scissors, and thread. These cases could incorporate several small compartments or pockets and were often rolled or folded and secured with a ribbon or tie. They were kept in so-called ​“tie-on” pockets: detachable pockets that became popular in the 17^th century and offered women a practical, portable means of carrying personal belongings.

Worn around the waist, these pockets could hold a wide range of possessions, including sewing implements, money, and other everyday objects. In contrast to the sewn-in pockets that became characteristic of men’s clothing, women frequently relied on separate pockets worn underneath or alongside their garments. Pockets thus constitute a compelling metaphor for privilege: often unnoticed by those who possess them, access to functional storage can shape freedom of movement, privacy, and the possibilities for participation in everyday social life.

In this context, Gorm’s work can be read alongside Silvia Federici’s analysis of the relationship between private property, patriarchy, the family, and the development of capitalism. Federici argues that the consolidation of private property and changing systems of inheritance were closely connected to the reorganisation of gender relations and the sexual division of labour, contributing, in many contexts, to women’s increasing economic dependence. Rather than representing a single causal development, these processes can be understood as mutually reinforcing transformations through which women’s access to property, income, and economic autonomy has, in many contexts, been progressively restricted.