36:16 minutes
Michelle 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. The work uses these characters as metaphors to highlight the lives of those who live in the shadows—or feel like they do—and the anxiety they experience as marginalized figures. Musidora was a 20th-century feminist, who was known not only for acting in movies, but also for directing her own plays and films, and having secret affairs with Colette and other famous people of the time. In Handelman’s version, Feuillade’s character Irma Vep, and her real-life counterpart Musidora, is not a vampire but a member of a gang who steals jewels. They are played by Zackary Drucker, a trans woman known as an artist and television producer on the show Transparent , and Flawless Sabrina, a prominent LGBT activist, drag queen, performer, and actress. The differences of their generations, the togetherness of the characters they play in the work, and their friendship and support for each other in real life, create a complex narrative around the cultural evolution of gender. Handelman digs into the subconscious secrets of Irma Vep, as played by Drucker, by allowing viewers a peek into Irma Vep’s therapy sessions, creating a complicated narrative around the experience of living in the margins of society. As Drucker improvises her dialogue, her existence as a trans woman brings in a different perspective about living undercover and being marginalized.
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.
Douglas Gordon’s single-channel video The Left Hand Can’t See That The Right Hand is Blind, captures an unfolding scene between two hands in leather gloves—at first seemingly comfortable to be entwined, and later, engaged in a struggle...
The best East Asian films of 2023 | Dazed â¬…ï¸ Left Arrow *ï¸âƒ£ Asterisk â Star Option Sliders âœ‰ï¸ Mail Exit Film & TV Dazed Review 2023 From Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s long-awaited Evil Does Not Exist, to Hirokazu Kore-eda’s ‘absolute masterpiece’ Monster 12 December 2023 Text James Balmont The year 2023, now coming to a bitter end, was jam-packed with all kinds of zeitgeist-piercing movies...
Lesley Lokko Receives Royal Gold Medal 2024 for Architecture | Contemporary And search for something search C& AMÉRICA LATINA EN FR MEMBERSHIP EN FR Editorial All Editorial Features Installation Views Inside the Library Interviews News Opinions Events All Events Art Fairs Conferences Exhibitions Festivals Performances Screenings Talks / Workshops C& Projects C& Artists’ Editions C& Commissions C& Center of Unfinished Business Show me your shelves! C& Education Mentoring Program Critical Writing Workshops Lectures / Seminars Membership Opportunities Print C& Audio Archive On Tour Places Explore IN CONVERSATION INSTALLATION VIEW WE GOT ISSUES DETOX LABORATORY OF SOLIDARITY CONSCIOUS CODES CURRICULUM OF CONNECTIONS LOVE ACTUALLY OVER THE RADAR BLACK CULTURES MATTER INSIDE THE LIBRARY LOOKING BACK Follow About Contact Newsletter Advertise Imprint Data protection Membership Contemporary And (C&) is funded by: Editorial All Editorial Features Installation Views Inside the Library Interviews News Opinions Events All Events Art Fairs Conferences Exhibitions Festivals Performances Screenings Talks / Workshops C& Projects C& Artists’ Editions C& Commissions C& Center of Unfinished Business Show me your shelves! C& Education Mentoring Program Critical Writing Workshops Lectures / Seminars Membership Opportunities Print C& Audio Archive On Tour Places Explore IN CONVERSATION INSTALLATION VIEW WE GOT ISSUES DETOX LABORATORY OF SOLIDARITY CONSCIOUS CODES CURRICULUM OF CONNECTIONS LOVE ACTUALLY OVER THE RADAR BLACK CULTURES MATTER INSIDE THE LIBRARY LOOKING BACK GO TO C& AMÉRICA LATINA About Contact Newsletter Advertise Imprint Data protection Membership News Lesley Lokko Receives Royal Gold Medal 2024 for Architecture One of the world’s highest honours in architecture goes to architect, educator, author and curator Lesley Lokko...
Roberta Smith on the Power of Donald Judd’s Criticism – ARTnews.com Skip to main content By Alex Greenberger Plus Icon Alex Greenberger Senior Editor, ARTnews View All February 28, 2020 1:04pm A page from ARTnews ’s October 1959 issue featuring Donald Judd's review of Yayoi Kusama's show at Brata Gallery...
The artist writes about her work: “There is an endless desire to know what we look like from outer space and many of us have evolved into a species that exists across the disorienting spaces and timeframes of virtuality...
Rocket Society refers to a space project led by a group of Armenian researchers at the beginning of the 1960s...
This short looped-video NFT Invertebrate Interactions by Sofia Crespo aims to capture generated impressions of diatoms...
Freehand artist Mr Doodle comes to Hong Kong on mission to ‘doodle the world’: Briton’s work on show at K11 Musea and Pearl Lam Galleries | South China Morning Post Advertisement Advertisement Art + FOLLOW Get more with my NEWS A personalised news feed of stories that matter to you Learn more British artist Sam Cox, better known as Mr Doodle, draws on a model spaceship at Hong Kong MTR station in Central, Hong Kong on November 19...
With Roca Carbon ( Charcoal Rock , 2012) and Roca Grafito ( Graphite Rock , 2012), López plays with our relationship to inert and unremarkable objects such as rocks...
Conceived as the catalogue of the exhibition “L’exigence de la saudade”, this publication gathers: Essays, Interview, Artists’s notes ( in English) 48 pages, illustrations, b&w 5 euros Padmini Chettur | Maarten Visser Zamthingla Ruivah | Prajakta Potnis Zasha Colah | Sumesh Sharma Emilie Villez | Léna Monnier | Jean Bhownagary Tyeb Mehta | Nalini Malani | Judy Blum Krishna Reddy | Justin Ponmany Prabhakar Pachpute | Victorine Grataloup Yogesh Barve | Sachin Bonde | Poonam Jain Mangesh Kapse | Carla Montenegro pad.ma Amol Patil | Nikhil Raunak | Alexandre Singh...
War of words over China breaks out on London graffiti wall - France 24 Skip to main content War of words over China breaks out on London graffiti wall Issued on: 09/08/2023 - 15:42 02:27 War of words over China breaks out on London graffiti wall (2023) © AFP / France 24 Video by: Juliette MONTILLY Follow Long renowned as a graffiti artist's heaven, Brick Lane in east London has found itself at the heart of a furious political debate overseas after a group of Chinese art students spray-painted Communist Party slogans over one of its walls...
ANCER Lab 03 Manila: How arts managers are surviving COVID-19 | ArtsEquator Thinking and Talking about Arts and Culture in Southeast Asia ArtsEquator Viewpoints Mah Jun Yi and Low Pey Sien November 22, 2021 By Wennie Yang (1,200 words, 4-minute read) Pandemic restrictions have put arts and cultural workers and institutions in a bind: choosing between sustaining their missions at times of a global pandemic or ceasing operations altogether...