Dorian, a cinematic perfume
2009 - Film & Video (Film & Video)
63:00 minutes
Michelle Handelman
In Dorian, a cinematic perfume, video is used as a community gatherer, a tool to speak about particular subcultures, in this case the trans-gender drag queen New York community, past and present. Developed from a literary work, it deconstructs notions of narrative forms, styles and conventions. It is a hybrid piece, an example of the elasticity of the medium. Performance rules in the work and so does presence, theatrical presence, with the invitation to cast the performers as themselves, to bring to the work their own making this work a very fascinating manifestation of a true collaboration with the erasure of authorship.
Michelle Handelman’s video, installation, live performance, and photography works analyze the human sublime in terms of its excess and dullness, providing a sneak peek into a jewel thief’s therapy sessions or following the life of a famous drag queen who experiences her own narcissistic destruction due to her increasing fame. Coming of age during the AIDS crisis and Culture Wars of the 1990s, the artist exposes the complicated spaces in which queer identities exist and transform, questioning the role of gender, race, class, and sexuality. Her works narrate tales of a dark human subconsciousness, putting her spotlight on outsiders and marginalized individuals. Raising philosophical questions around human existence, her characters function to uncover human fears in relation to sexuality, death, and chaos. Her video installations produce visual and psychological sensations for the viewers, inviting them to take part in these narratives. In this way, Handelman invites the viewers to question their own existence, identity, and experiences related to survival and belonging.
Colors:
Related works of genres: » san francisco art institute alumni
» see more
© » KADIST
Barry McGee
Barry McGee’s Untitled is a collection of roughly fifty, framed photographs, paintings, and text pieces clustered together in corner...
© » KADIST
Kota Ezawa
2017The Crime of Art is an animation by Kota Ezawa that appropriates scenes from various popular Hollywood films featuring the theft of artworks: a Monet painting in The Thomas Crown Affair (1999), a Rembrandt in Entrapment (1999), a Cellini in How to Steal a Million (1966), and an emerald encrusted dagger in Topkapi (1964)...
© » KADIST
Fran Herndon
1962Working independently, Herndon experimented at the forefront of a now-canonical method—appropriation—by painting additions into found images from magazines such as Life and Sports Illustrated in a way that imbues the resulting works with mythical significance...
© » KADIST
Sharon Lockhart
2008Lockhart’s film Lunch Break investigates the present state of American labor, through a close look at the everyday life of the workers at the Bath Iron Works shipyard—a private sector of the U...
Other related works, blended automatically
» see more
© » KADIST
Michelle Handelman
2015Michelle Handelman’s video work Irma Vep, The Last Breath takes its inspiration from Musidora, a famous French silent film actress, and a character she played called Irma Vep, from the film Les Vampires (1915), directed by Louis Feuillade...
Related works sharing similar palette
» see more
© » KADIST
Marina Rosenfeld
2019The installation Music Stands: Free Exercise 7, 8, and 9 by Marina Rosenfeld consists of music stand-like structures and a corresponding set of panels and acoustic devices that direct, focus, obstruct, reflect and project sound in the gallery...
© » KADIST
Allen Ruppersberg
1970Untitled (City Limits) is a series of five black-and-white photographs of road signs, specifically the signs demarcating city limits of several small towns in California...
© » 1854 PHOTOGRAPHY
Now on show in New York City: BJP's Female in Focus winners - 1854 Photography Subscribe latest Agenda Bookshelf Projects Industry Insights magazine Explore ANY ANSWERS FINE ART IN THE STUDIO PARENTHOOD ART & ACTIVISM FOR THE RECORD LANDSCAPE PICTURE THIS CREATIVE BRIEF GENDER & SEXUALITY MIXED MEDIA POWER & EMPOWERMENT DOCUMENTARY HOME & BELONGING ON LOCATION PORTRAITURE DECADE OF CHANGE HUMANITY & TECHNOLOGY OPINION THEN & NOW Explore Stories latest agenda bookshelf projects theme in focus industry insights magazine ANY ANSWERS FINE ART IN THE STUDIO PARENTHOOD ART & ACTIVISM FOR THE RECORD LANDSCAPE PICTURE THIS CREATIVE BRIEF GENDER & SEXUALITY MIXED MEDIA POWER & EMPOWERMENT DOCUMENTARY HOME & BELONGING ON LOCATION PORTRAITURE DECADE OF CHANGE HUMANITY & TECHNOLOGY OPINION THEN & NOW © Minxu Li, Female in Focus 2022 single image winner BJP’s new exhibition takes place in a converted Brooklyn townhouse, reflecting the award’s domestic focus The winners of BJP ’s Female in Focus 2022 include two series and 20 single images which demonstrate the sheer power of photography by women...
Other works by: » Michelle Handelman
» see more
© » KADIST
Michelle Handelman
2015Michelle Handelman’s video work Irma Vep, The Last Breath takes its inspiration from Musidora, a famous French silent film actress, and a character she played called Irma Vep, from the film Les Vampires (1915), directed by Louis Feuillade...
Related works found in the same semantic group
» see more
© » KADIST
Chloé Quenum
2017The stained glass windows of Chloé Quenum’s Les Allégories evoke the sacred and describe the movement of a rooster in the form of patterns extracted from a wax fabric found in Benin...
© » KADIST
Ryan Gander
2012Epiphany…learnt through hardship is composed of a bronze sculpture depicting the model of the little dancer of Degas, in the pose of a female nude photographed by Edward Weston (Nude, 1936) accompanied by a blue cube...
