Vanitas; a Reenactment at Salzburger Kunstverein, Punctum Exhibition. 2008 – 2010, aplastic video Iron, lamp, lenses, leather, liver dimensions variable Courtesy of the artist and Collection of Ignazio Maria Colonna I could never agree with this sentence of Barthes: “to recognise the studium is inevitably to encounter the photographer’s intentions”1 , yet while photographing Claudia Gian Ferrari’s portrait I was well persuaded that I was about to capture a last moment. Hence my intention did indeed weave a harmonious studium: the colourful collector of skulls and vanitases has deep wrinkles. She will not live long. Her hairstyle should reveal that she is battling cancer. The young woman’s stare makes me fix my gaze again on Claudia Gian Ferrari’s portrait. Her hands frame the triangle of the face, tethering my gaze on her eyes even more (shortly those eyes will close and pain will disappear for good). All this is eventually crowned by a gilded vanitas ring made by the Venetian Attilio Codognato. The young woman on the left – in harmony with the liquor bar, wine, sweets and flowers in the background – serves life’s perishability like all to-be-perished elements in vanitas painting. Her horseshoe necklace with the ends pointing down emetically lays stress on bad luck. All seem to convey the inevitability of death: memento mori. Nothing causes trouble and nothing vacillates the unity of the photograph, not even the yellow coat at the centre of the image; it rather places emphasis on an absent person, probably a woman. The photo is too “alive” and violence is implicit in my camera and I am aware of my being an agent of Death, both in its Barthesian sense (that Death is the edios of photography and all photographers are agents of Death) and as the classical Messenger of Death. The photo appears to be carefully staged (though it was nothing but a trouvaille). What surprises here, Barthes would have said, makes the photo as docile as all vanitases gathered in the exhibition Vanities; from Pompeii to Damien Hirst at Musée Maillol. Artists of this genre have frequently unlearned ephemerality, death and decay, since they have mostly tried to create undying, imperishable works of art. I too failed to live up to promise of death. To disturb this “unary photograph” I turned it to a slide and put it inside an iron pipe with lenses inside, the slide is projected on a wall and the projector lamp, meanwhile, gradually cooks a liver2 I placed on the pipe. Little by little the liver burns, blood drips on the floor, the liver decays and turns to ashes. In each re-enactment camera obscura and camera ardens collide. In its first projection (the exhibition Punctum is its second projection or performance for as a passion play it is being re-enacted) I had to decide whether I should make the front or the back out-of-focus. I decided to have the background blurred. With doing this I wiped out what disturbed my studium, the accident that pierced holes in the entirety of my conventional reading of the work, the punctum that bruised my orthodox vanitas: behind Claudia I see a customer’s hand that I cannot define. This hand and the waiter’s smile, that I have no word for, prick me. The accident not only disturbs my studium but also my grieving for the loss I endured. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography, Richard Howard (trans), Farrar, Straus and Giroux (New York 1981), p 27. 2. The last gallery Claudia opens is her neighbour’s house. The neighbour had killed his wife and had thrown her liver into the courtyard. Claudia rents his house and turns it into a gallery. Later she donates her assets to museums, and then comes to Iran. Barbad Golshiri meets her. Claudia buys his Handjob (2004-08), an ephemeral work of art, a to-be-vanished writing on a crumpled paper (soon to be fingered by a lawyer butchering Claudia’s inheritance and assets and wondering if it is in fact a work of art). They decide to work together. Claudia goes back to Italy and realises that shes suffering from pancreatic cancer. Golshiri goes to Milan to visit her and decides to dedicate his solo at Claudia’s gallery to her last days. The work consisted of a large chunk of wax at the centre of the space on which Claudia is to engrave her presence in the presence or absence of the viewers. She would then receive her friends and the audience in gatherings where they could enter her house witness her last moments. Golshiri and the young woman we see in the picture visit Claudia when she is just back from a chemo session. She suffers from dry mouth, nausea and dehydration and cannot stand the smell of food, yet stands and starts to cook liver for them. Claudia cuts her hand with a knife. The blood doesn’t coagulate easily. Claudia doesnt make it to the opening. She dies.
Posted on: Mon, 28 Jul 2014 08:55:05 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015