With Library en core, Heidi Specker thematizes the library as a cultural space of negotiation in her display exhibition at HGB Leipzig and its library. The arts pages and social media are currently referencing this context again through the fashion trend librariancore.

The starting point is Cindy Sherman’s black-and-white photograph Untitled Filmstill #13. The cliché of the librarian reaching for a book on the shelf and evoking outdated fashion stereotypes was already presented by Sherman in 1978 both iconically and critically, questioning assigned female roles. The current fashion term core is taken up and, through the modification to en core, is clearly marked as an outdated repetition of the “well-read lady.”

The librariancore trend propagates a fashion style based on what librarians are stereotypically imagined to wear in films and books. In the display cases, this is staged: with checkered skirts and exclusively feminine connotations, the trend remains trapped in a simple cliché.

The title Library en core makes it clear—this is too much, because it is too little, for Heidi Specker.

In the exhibition, Heidi Specker, together with Charlotte Walter, aligns herself with Cindy Sherman, engages with current Cindy Sherman merchandising from the art world, and declares: “I’d rather be swimming!”