Title: Stay this moment
Medium: Performative Photography Animation
Size: Variable
Duration: Continuous loop
Year: 2015
Description
The piece of work is projected into a corner of a dark space. Half of the image is elongated distorting the silhouette of the stove. For a short moment, the audience loose their sense of position as the ephemeral image gives the impression of floating in space. In the video piece it looks as if the photographs are moving. Four photographs are animated with slow transitions so that it appears as if the female figure moves in and out of frame. The figure haunts, translucent and uncertain it is being both here and elsewhere.
Reflection
In this work I explore a series of Swedish national romantic paintings from the beginning of the 1900’s. I re-constructed a traditional Swedish croft environment in a Manchester using this as a stage set exploring Swedish national narratives. Using performative photography I restage a series of collective gestures often repeated in national romantic paintings. I create this installation out of a desire for the idyllic croft environment. As I perform the role of the woman in the idyll, as I embody the scenes from the national romantic paintings I filled with a sense uncertainty. I realise how I differ, how my position in diaspora has altered my sense of self, how I do not easily fit the frame.