Untitled (Wave)

2021 - Film & Video (Film & Video)

30:19 minutes

Anne Imhof

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Anne Imhof’s video work Untitled (Wave) creates resonances between the feminine, adoration, and immateriality, while also referring to the history of art and aesthetics, in particular the concept of the sublime. Starring Imhof’s partner and collaborator Eliza Douglas, the film depicts a woman, naked from the waist up, dressed simply in tracksuit trousers, long black hair, feet dipped in the ocean water. The woman bears a long whip, while she looks out at the horizon and the waves lick at her bare feet. Throughout the video, the woman repeatedly whips at the sea, changing in direction, diverging in rhythm, in the shape of the circles that the movements of the arm and body draw in the air before inflicting an aggression on the water. The work frames the female body as daring and defiant; beating back the waves before the immensity of rebellious waters. With this exploration of image and movement, the artist creates resonance between the feminine, worship, and immateriality. Referring also to the history of art and aesthetic discourse, particularly to the concept of the sublime associated with the romantic period of contemplation of nature, of bleak and desolate landscapes conveying the smallness of the scale of the individual before the grandeur of the universe.

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Anne Imhof expands the canonical conception of performance to consider documentation and transmission. Imhof’s approach to the visibility of performance negotiates different designs for time and space through installation and video. Her performances can thus be considered as ‘re-enactments’, as they are replayed in different contexts with variations to the installation. As part of her practice, Imhof often includes her friends and peers in a series of ongoing rehersals to expand and experiment with extra-linguistic forms of communication. In examining and studying movements and gestures, often performed over several hours in silence, Imhof produces a sophisticated vocabulary of contemporary performance art.

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Colors:

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• femininity.n.01
• nature.n.01
• reverend.s.01
• identity.n.01
• body.n.01
• german contemporary artists