The group show presents a compilation of contemporary female portraits created in various media: video, painting, animation, participative happening installation, digital virtual reality and sculpture. By combining a traditional and a new media art, the show reflects on diversity and flexibility in relation to the subject, suggesting a timeless, rather than fixed perspective on the question of femininity and female identity.
No narrative, analysis or comparison, only an elusive expression to let the art works speak for themselves as well as together. The combined result turns out in its nature like a scent - artistic snapshots create the shadow of collective impression of a translucent female creature.
Art has always conveyed cultural ideas about beauty, gender and power. Whereas gender identity can be seen as a collective and biologically given, many recent conceptualisations of femininity rely upon social and cultural constructions. Seen in the light of these issues, the question of female identity can be considered as a complex matter. The show is an investigation into how the subject of feminine representation, self-representation and social interaction is approached through the contemporary perspective.
Reflecting on the portrayals of women of the past as well as on how female identity has been maintained and generated at all times in its varying shades, the show brings out a sense of the fragility of identity. It attempts to confront the stiff ideals, which continue to strive in social imagination, where the majority of media coverage reflects a faulty image of beautiful perfection.
The title insists on another reality where everything is not to be grasped and brings about the sensation that we fail to see the depths of the female soul because we are always only seeing the mere representations instead. The show forces us to trust the intangible impression of female identity equally as much as we might trust our preconceived images of femininity.
One should feel it in the air - intimacy, darkness, pain, emptiness, emotions, tears, absurdness, selfless love, the lowest bottom and the highest sky. All these are portraits of every woman. And yet, as with icebergs, their full identity and power remains hidden and never to be predicted.
List of the participants and artworks :
Kinder Album - ‘Effective Reflection’, participative happening
Julia Beliaeva - ‘The Last Human Mother and Baby’, digital print + virtual reality
Tracey Emin - ‘Those Who Suffer Love’, animation
Tao Hui - ‘The Dusk of Teheran’, video
Klara Kristalova - ‘Birch Girl’ sculpture (to be confirmed)
Christoph Schmidberger - ‘Resist Me - That’s All I Need’, painting
