Irma Vep, The Last Breath

2015 - Film & Video (Film & Video)
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.

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