Suzanne Heintz parodies the overwrought pursuit of success on LinkedIn

Her husband and daughter are now in the basement. Artist Suzanne Heintz (1965) dragged Chauncey and Mary Margaret around the world for twenty years, from their own backyard to London and Paris; everywhere she shot Technicolor pictures of their enviable family happiness. The fact that Heintz actually posed with two mannequins gave her series such a bizarre, subversive edge that it attracted worldwide attention.

In 2019, she closed it Playing House Project officially finished, she says in a video call from her hometown of Denver. “It was time, I didn’t want to milk it for too long.” But the work lives on; she still receives reactions to it, surprisingly often from the Netherlands. “I am really impressed by how interested you are in art. The comparison with Americans is almost embarrassing.”

In the US, she has learned the hard way, as an artist you almost automatically sign up for “a life as a loser, in a financial sense. And money is all that matters.” Despite the buzz, media appearances, lectures and exhibitions, Heintz did not make a cent from her passion project; on the contrary, she invested nights, weekends and savings to continue it and worked full-time on the side.

For fourteen years, Heintz photographed herself as the ‘ideal family’ with her husband, the mannequin, and daughter, also the mannequin.

In 2016, everything fell apart: she was treated for a brain tumor, lost her job as an art director at a TV channel and a day later Trump became president. “Women lost their safety in one fell swoop.” But: “If things are really going badly, you get moving.”

Heintz had to go to work. “Putting yourself on the market”, starting with a neat profile on LinkedIn – a “necessary evil”. Since then, she has gone from job to job as an art or video director. Often in young companies, with all the uncertainties that entails. During the pandemic, she worked from home for a booming fitness brand that, when the world opened up again, ordered its employees to come to the office in New York; Heintz moved there from Denver, but three months later her position was again “redundant,” along with those of 3,000 others.

This capriciousness leads to a collective identity crisis, according to Heintz. “You are expected to give everything of yourself at work, but how do you stay in one corporate culture true to who you are? At the bottom of the ladder you feel anonymous and replaceable. And the higher you go, the more you are forced to act, to create an icon of yourself – especially as a woman, because we have to both old boys‘understanding codes as embodying a traditional image of women.”

https://youtu.be/4VzTZLZ5ql4?si=v7N9aba4zGD2fI-q

In Heintz’s new series, Best Foot ForwardIn comical short films, she parodies the business archetypes she sees in the overwrought search for success. Broker, travel agent, financial director: with the right wig, Heintz is immediately inspired. Twice a month she presents a new alter ego on LinkedIn. “They all have my name, my DNA – I could have been them myself. That already proves that these kinds of identities are not real. It’s an act, a mask. You are not your resume.”

The art of Suzanne Heintz can be found on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn. The documentary ‘Suzanne Heintz.’ is on NPO Start. Art Imitating Life’. Exhibition at Wouter de Bruycker gallery in Antwerp until November 12: www.wdb-finearts.be

‘The real estate agent’ in ‘Best Foot Forward’ on LinkedIn Suzanne Heintz

‘The travel advisor’ in ‘Best Foot Forward’ on LinkedIn Suzanne Heintz

‘The financial director’ in ‘Best Foot Forward’ on LinkedIn Suzanne Heintz