Art Face (30s excerpt).mov 2025
“…the capacity to be overwhelmed by the beautiful is astonishingly sturdy and survives amidst the harshest distractions. even war, the prospect of certain death, cannot expunge it.” susan sontag, at the same time: essays and speeches
masque
mercury’s first house
eyes dark holed in bone
under wraps.
skull,
entranced.
fertile ground,
Neptune’s second night
in dream as messenger
she awakens. ab 2025
‘a lot of people seem to think that art or photography is about the way things look, or the surface of things. that’s not what it’s about for me. it’s really about relationships and feelings…that it’s not about a style or a look or a setup. it’s about emotional obsession and empathy.’ Nan Goldin
ART FACE, photographic and video work
studio idea / work ongoing
ART FACE #1 unknowable object of self
STUDIO/thoughts
a split screen showing two pairs of eyes, staring out at the viewer.
one artefact, a skull found buried and unidentified. its shaded gaze the spectacle of once mortal remains, the bare elements of what that is left when artifice falls away.
another other is a contemporary woman wrapped in a ritual of beauty. Masqued.
within the context of ritual, the spiritual power of masking is one which transports the wearer, into realms unseen, giving voice to the unspoken.
putting on a mask places its wearer at an juncture between present and past, the living and the dead, this world and the otherworld. as a form of disguise, concealment, to hide identity and therefore establishes a unique distinction of being, another.
