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In all of her works, Heike Rose Schmidt-Pfeil asks the question: who controls the female image? Male artists rarely reference the female body on its own terms but showcase women as either objects of desire or as objects of inspiration and veneration.
In western art, women are usually represented as powerless and sexually subservient to their circumstance. In contrast, Heike Rose’s women are always depicted as comfortable in their sexuality and always in control of the environment they inhabit. They are sometimes placed in a context which suggest traditional roles, but on closer examination they are the opposite of what they appear. They may have a suggestive body placement, but they will also playfully look right at the viewer and dare the viewer to look deeper, and often emphasize their message with a straightforward and sometimes ironic statement directed at the viewer.
Heike Rose’s women are proud of who they are and demand power over how they are shown and most of all, they want control of their bodies and wish to share an equality of vision with their counterparts.
In addition, each artwork tells a story: of love and loss, happiness and sadness, victories and struggles, and other emotions universally experienced by mankind. Creating an artwork often starts with an external event. The stimulus becomes a dialogue between the outside event and the artist’s beliefs and world view, which then spurs the process of transforming the resulting story into an artwork.
The sex appeal of many of the subjects, juxtaposed with the symbols and the irony of the words in the speech bubbles will often create a superficially provocative scene. It is anticipated that this will elicit a strong emotion in the viewer and a curiosity to reflect and explore the entire work more closely. The viewer will soon be able to decipher the symbols and read the whole story.
While the artwork may be directly inspired by the artist’s reaction to the external event, it desires to be a mirror for the viewer to explore and understand their own reactions to similar experiences. Ultimately, the artwork is not intended to create an answer for the spectator but is a platform for them to imagine their own stories, history, personality, experiences, and emotions.
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