“Reclining Toward the Sublime: Anna Uddenberg’s Privileged

By Preston Sawyer

One can scarcely walk among Anna Uddenberg’s Privileged without feeling that one has entered a sanctum where the human form has been liberated from the vulgar tyranny of anatomy. These are not mannequins, dear reader—they are manifestos.

Uddenberg’s contorted figures, trussed elegantly upon luggage carts like Duchampian debutantes, are not grotesque, as the more literal-minded would hastily bleat. No—what we encounter here is the hyperreal body rendered at once absurd and aspirational. Limbs bend like parentheses around the vacant void of modern existence; posteriors ascend heavenward as if offering themselves to the algorithms of Instagram. What the hoi polloi perceive as lurid objectification, I perceive as an exalted choreography of desire in its most luggage-compatible form.

Consider, if you will, the symphony of textures: glossy polymers stretched across impossible curves, chrome scaffolding that gleams with the antiseptic promise of the airport terminal. Here is a tableau where consumerism and carnality intertwine, where the selfie-stick becomes scepter, and the duty-free lounge becomes temple.

To dismiss this work as obscene is to admit one has never gazed deeply into the abyss of the boarding gate at 3 A.M. Art, after all, is the mirror we dare not polish—and Uddenberg, in her infinite benevolence, forces us to confront our reflection even as it arches unnaturally backward onto a Samsonite trolley.

Five ascots out of five.

— Preston Alistair Sawyer, Doctor of Comparative Aesthetic Ontology (Hon.)