Painting my portrait 1999/2009
Video installation 24 minutes loop
Still frame
About Painting my portrait 1999/2009
This video has a ten year old history. It was originaly made with the title Painting my portrait refering to the painting of selfportraits, as an analog video (S-VHS) with a duration of 4 minutes and soundtrack from Tricky. It was a video performance where I painted my portrait by putting on my daily make up. The painting was therfore replaced by make up, and the self was replaced with a retouched version of the self. In this context, the video work was dealing with questions of identity and feminism.
In the early 2000 I digitized the video and transfered it to a DV-tape. During years of storage, the original S-VHS tape has been destroyed and the DV-tape has got digital noise making it impossible to play normal. When I was asked to participate in the project Artists as ambassadors in 2009, I immediately came to think about this videowork, and discovered the damages. Since the project was situated in Sarajevo, the heart of Bosnia & Hercegovina and also recently center for the Bosnian war (the siege of Sarajevo), the art project was thematically dealing with the home. What meaning of the word home does the individual artists in the project have?
In addition to the installation Home sweet home, I edited the damaged video, making a new portrait of my self ten years later. Now the tape has got marks, distortions and digital noise. And I as a person am ten years older. I therefore edited the tape by slowing it down, making every distortion visible and turning my face into a collage of digital pixles from my ten year younger picture. The soundtrack from Tricky was replaced with a soundtrack from Svarte greiner.
Shows
Umjetnik kao ambasador - Artists as ambassadors
15.july - 15.august at the National Museum of Bosnia & Hercegovina, Sarajevo 2009.
Homeward bound
january - january at Galleri BOA, Oslo 2010.
Installation view of Painting my portrait 1999/2009 at the National Museum of Bosnia & Hercegovina, Sarajevo 2009.
