Petra Rautenstrauch: C'mon Billy 2007, C-print/Diasec 90 x 90 cm, Edition: 5+2 a.p.
Expositions du 27/10/2012 au 31/1/2013 Terminé
Anzenberger Gallery Absberggasse 27 1100 Vienne Autriche
Anzenberger Gallery Absberggasse 27 1100 Vienne Autriche
The self-portrait is the biggest challenge that an artist can take on. The exhibition, "Me, Myself & I", presents seven contemporary positions on how a woman can approach the enterprise of the self-portrait as a photographic artist: starting on the conceptual rather than the documentary side, enacted and performed several times, with an epistemological view, or borrowing visual arrangements from well-known works by other photographers.
The variety of digital image recording devices available—which are presently not only in the form of cameras, but are available practically everywhere at any time, whether they are built into computers, mobile phones, etc.—encourage us, alongside photographers and artists, to constantly produce our own self-portraits and to show them on the internet and social media platforms for a whole audience to view. If one is so inclined, one can reinvent one’s identity in pictures ad infinitum.
Isabelle Graeff: My Mother and I, 2009, c-print 100 x 75 m, Edition: 5 + 1 a.p.
Isabelle Graeff (born in Heidelberg/Germany in 1977, lives and works in Berlin) investigates her own identity in her long-term work, "My Mother and I", by contrasting it with that of her mother—of whom she is the spitting image. Her work has been referred to as "an illustrated atlas of self-reflexive expressions and explorations, imbued with the desire to experience herself as someone else", and as "unadorned", demonstrating "the border between facade and true identity" Mascha Kuchejda (FAZ).
Lucy Hilmer (born in Washington, USA, in 1945, lives and works in San Francisco) documented herself in the same outfit on every birthday for the last 40 years, which, after all this time, has resulted in a revealing “birthday suit”. She started the annual ritual at the age of 29. More or less by chance, the first image of the series, taken in lollypop panties, shoes, and socks, emerged during the process of getting completely undressed. She immediately recognized this as the best of all her self-portraits and decided to stick with this image from then on.
Katarzyna Majak (lives and works in Poland) filmed and photographed herself after a failed marriage. In her project, "dechirer", she not only reveals the abruption of her marriage, but goes about it in a refreshing way by staging herself and her wedding dress in bizarre fashions and unusual locations.
Emily Peacock (lives and works in Houston, USA), reconstructs and pays tribute to the photography of the distinguished photographer, Diane Arbus, whose work heavily influenced her. In "You, me & Diane", she creates pictures of herself and members of their family, who seem immediately familiar to us. However, Peacock’s frontal views are not only characterized by her distinctive face, which gives the works their own entirely unique quality.
Emily Peacock: You, me and Diane, 2012, silver gelatin print 25 x 25 cm, Edition: 4 + 3 a.p.
Petra Rautenstrauch (born in Vienna in 1976, lives and works in Vienna) invented the mutable art character, Peggy Poetry, whom she presents to the viewer in different roles in her photographic series, "Who the fuck is Peggy Poetry?". Using Peggy as her photographic alter ego, she questions herself, constantly torn between one identity and the other.
Jana Romanova (born in St. Petersburg in 1984, lives and works in St. Petersburg) handles the subject of self-representation as a woman thoughtfully and with self-awareness in her work, "W wie Women". She asks herself questions like: “What is beauty?” or “What does it mean to be feminine?”, and sets herself the goal of getting to the bottom of the phenomenon of womanhood in her photographic work, in order to decode it.
Alena Zhandarova (born in Ivanovo, Russia in 1988) is the youngest of the featured artists. In her project, "Cornflower Tea and concealing Chocolate", she restages herself over and over in surprising ways. Within imaginative interiors, she creates atmospheric images of herself and her features, and, in doing so, the category of space plays a crucial role.
Lucy Hilmer: Birthday suit # 31, 1976, archival pigment print 23 x 23 cm, Edition: 10 + 2 a.p.
The ways in which a woman decides to bring herself into an image reveals something about her both as an artist and a person. The projects of the seven artists featured in this show represent the various possibilities and the wealth of female self-representation that exists today, which have come a long way since the days of snapshot photography. In search of their own identity, questions regarding their gender are always looming in the back of their minds.