Initially created as a photographic series in 2003, Brodbeck based her 2016 reconstruction of ‘Mood Motel’ on the inner lodgings of the Hollywood motel circuit. ‘I did this photographic series, which was really about identity,’ Brodbeck explains, ‘because the motel is so attached to our culture, the cinematic culture, the storytelling culture, and the everyday life of the American people.’ As part of the series, Brodbeck replicates her own image to form multiple personas: ‘I’m face to face with each other,’ says the artist, ‘I double myself in those images to create a story.’ Performing ‘Mood Motel’ was ‘really a synthesis of this experience of the room,’ she adds. ‘I created the physical installation of the room, of this void or non-place, where everything is possible, where any person who comes to the exhibition can be in the installation. Here you can start over. You can live something different, you can create for yourself a new identity, confront your own identity and your own life.’ There is ‘something freeing about knowing you can drive somewhere and end up finding a motel,’ Brodbeck says. Perhaps it encourages us to perceive ourselves with a similar freedom, given the prospect of an open road.

Disrupting received notions of identity sits at the core of Brodbeck’s work. In her Oeuvres Photographiques, published by Drago, Michèle Auer of the Auer Photo Foundation, describes its effect as ‘a disturbing sort of identity maze that uses faces as rather vague reference points, and buildings as ultimate ports of call.’ Using techniques designed to disorientate the viewer, Brodbeck’s photographic series ‘Extra Coated’ and ‘Urbanscapes and Cityscapes’ both use colour-blocking and erasure to ‘disturb’ the viewer into observing their surroundings. As with ‘Mood Motel’ audiences must puzzle through an environment that transforms the banal into something otherworldly. ‘One only has to follow the thread,’ writes Auer. ‘Colour is there. It says it all.’

Where colour plays such a large role in her work, Brodbeck acknowledges the influence of Pop art and the movement’s ironic approach towards consumerism. Candy-bright and gelatinously textured, photographs such as the ‘Hell Yes’ doughnut almost look good enough to eat: ‘Call it retro Pop art. Post-Pop art. Popsicle. The ‘Extra Coated’ is like the cherry on top of the cake, the nail polish that can scratch easily. All of these touristic places [in the series] were places where really bad things happened. Now people want to see them as a symbol of greatness. I think bringing humour to this is a good way to disrupt it a bit. The doughnut seems to me a good shape for something in the US.’

As the scene closes on Brodbeck’s ‘Mood Motel’ performance, the Swiss artist pauses to reach for a crisp packet across the bed. She selects a crisp and places it in her mouth. ‘The ordinary is disconcerting,’ Brodbeck has written before, ‘all my works initiate from that angle.’ Watching ‘Mood Motel’ one is reminded of David Bowie’s stage show Lazarus, which also debuted last year. Has David Bowie had an influenced her work? ‘Yeah, big time. I love his universe. He’s known mostly as a musician, but his universe was completely multisensory. He played with persona and personality, and I do that also. I’m totally influenced by the 80s. I don’t know if it’s the worst period or the best period. It’s too much right?’