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Rineke Dijkstra
dal 15/3/2011 al 18/6/2011

Segnalato da

Sofia Curman



 
calendario eventi  :: 




15/3/2011

Rineke Dijkstra

Bonniers Konsthall, Stockholm

I See a Woman Crying. One of the two films in the exhibition shows a group of children from a primary school who interpret Picasso's painting Weeping Woman from 1937. In the second film, we see how the schoolgirl Ruth, who is deeply concentrated and at the same time slightly distracted, tries to capture Picasso's motif in her sketchbook. Dijkstra got the idea for the two films in 2008 when she was artist-in-residence at Tate Liverpool.


comunicato stampa

Bonniers Konsthall is proud to present I See a Woman Crying—two works about children and art by Dutch artist Rineke Dijkstra.

One of the two films in Rineke Dijkstra's exhibition I See A Woman Crying shows a group of children from a primary school who interpret Picasso's painting Weeping Woman from 1937. Together, the children devise stories about the woman in the image; how she feels, where she has been and where she is going. We never get to see the painting, but the children's imagination triggers our own. In the second film, we see how the schoolgirl Ruth, who is deeply concentrated and at the same time slightly distracted, tries to capture Picasso's motif in her sketchbook.

Rineke Dijkstra got the idea for the two films in 2008 when she was artist-in-residence at Tate Liverpool, whose collection includes Picasso's painting, and was fascinated by the museum's educational work with local schools. She was particularly interested in the "work in focus" sessions, where children looked at works for a prolonged time and then were encouraged to discuss them. Dijkstra noticed how the sessions aroused profound thoughts and emotions in the children and how much they had to say about the works.

Rineke Dijkstra was born in 1959 and is one of Holland's most influential contemporary artists. She has participated in several major international exhibitions, including two Venice Biennales, 1997 and 2001.

I See a Woman Crying is part of a series of exhibitions at Bonniers Konsthall that presents new works by artists who have played a decisive role in contemporary art. Previous instalments of the series include films by Salla Tykkä, Adrian Paci and Ann-Sofi Sidén.

Do I see a woman crying?
by Camilla Larsson, curator

The Weeping Woman. Nine boys and girls are arrayed, all dressed up, in front of the camera, as though posing for a school photograph. They are all wearing classic British school uniform. Few details indicate their social backgrounds. They tentatively open up a conversation about an artwork, which they are facing. Cautious descriptions of the subject matter, colours and shapes soon give way to freer speculation. They observe that the woman in the picture is crying, with tears running down her face, which is broken up into different colour fields. Some of the children say nothing at all, but their facial expressions and body language reveal that they are following the conversation. Others are more verbal. They think about and try to provide reasons for why the woman is crying. They use a classic museum-education approach that involves interpreting images by describing what they see in their own words, but I get the feeling that the children are talking about themselves, about broken relationships within their own surrounding worlds, perhaps their parents? It strikes me that they are still very young, but that they are already clearly giving expression to the world of which they are part, and which is a matter of expectations and ideas linked to identity, male and female. In the accompanying video, Ruth Drawing Picasso, we get to watch as one of the girls intently makes a drawing of the artwork. Judging by the titles and the children’s interpretations, it is Picasso’s famous portrait of the photographer Dora Maar, Weeping Woman, now in the Tate Liverpool, that is the original model for both of Rineke Dijkstra’s videoworks.

What is it that Dijkstra has the children show us? A kind of portrait of a portrait. The children cause me to see a woman crying, but I also see much more. With a practised hand Dijkstra guides me through a whole complex of questions about identity. In other words, how we as human beings become independent individuals, and how we can exist in the world. She depicts the unpredictable interplay between the individual and the group, in which we all recognize ourselves. She has been portraying people who find themselves in states of transition with delicacy and great care, since the 1980s. I play with the idea that the people in Dijkstra’s pictures serve as kinds of elusive trickster figures. Figures that occur in many cultures and religions, and who specifically guide people through life’s important transitions. Figures that are themselves also ambiguous and constantly changing. Dijkstra’s subjects specifically stand on the threshold, and are about to take that decisive step from something known into the unknown. Like the photographer herself, at that critical moment when she is about to immortalize a moment by pressing the shutter release. She has portrayed teenagers newly emerged from the sea posing in swimming costumes, mothers who have just given birth with their babies, young Israeli soldiers, and Portuguese matadors who have just faced the bull, to name a few examples that have become emblematic within photographic art. Dijkstra makes the individuals appear totally disarmed before us, as though standing naked before life. Often, they have been photographed full-length or in close-up. The background is pared down, we get a glimpse of ocean and a strip of sandy beach, a shrubbery or a curtain. Extremely few details tell us about the person’s sociological history, but the drama comes all the more to be played out on an existential level. The greatness lies in the simplicity. The figures in the portraits show us that it is life itself that is always in flux, however trying and bewildering it might be.

I find myself once again in front of the nine boys and girls, and it is not at all children that I see there, unaffected and untainted by life. I see conscious individuals, who have perhaps only dressed in the guise of innocent children.

Bonniers Konsthall would like to thank Clarion Hotel Sign, Mondriaan Foundation and the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands.

Image: The Weeping Woman, Tate Liverpool, 2009

Press contact:
Sofia Curman Tel + 46 8 7364266 sofia.curman@bonnierskonsthall.se

Bonniers Konsthall
Torsgatan 19 SE-113 90 Stockholm
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Saturday - Sunday: 11 am - 5 pm
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Entrance fee: SEK 70
Students: SEK 50
Pensioners: SEK 50
Membership: SEK 140
Free entrance for Children and youth under 18

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