Art & Authenticy

There were three specific works that really intrigued me. The first was Pinar Yolacan’s photographs of elderly women wearing satin dresses laced with animal innards. When I first saw the pictures, I thought the innards were fake and that they were fabrics made to look like innards. It was not to be disgusted after finding out that they were real, bloody animal parts. The plaque next to the display described the project as a comparison between the qualities of the sheen on rich fabrics and the sheen on raw animal innards. The idea itself is so strange and the concept is a little difficult to understand, but the photos were still very graphic and they drew me in.

The second piece that I found interesting would have to be the video by Grace Ndirita. In the video, she is wearing a black velvet mask. She continually strokes the mask; the clip is a commentary on the vanity of “attaining the ideal image” and it’s titled Artificial Beauty. Most of the other viewers found it to be a little eerie. It quite appropriate because often those who had already reached their idea of “ideal beauty” can look plastic and cold.

The last piece has aesthetic beauty– the set of photos containing the Lacrimacorpus. The bodies of the creatures were made entirely of inflated latex and they were dressed in elegant clothing. The location of the shoot was Germany, a site that had celebrated Goethe and also became a Nazi concentration camp at different points in time. The name of the creature is means “tear” and “body”. The photos are both beautiful and melancholy.