Wednesday, April 12, 2023

ÄSTHETISCH

Just received two sweet notes from my very talented former students C. Maria Norrman in Sweden and Aliza Shvarts of the United States who performed as Princess Pamina in the CHEAP production of The Magic Flute Part One: An Opera in Six Steps.

Dear friends,

Hello!
My film Jane Avril – The life of a Moulin Rouge Dancer will be screened on two occasions in Sweden this month, in Malmö and in Stockholm.

Jane Avril – The life of a Moulin Rouge dancer is an artistic documentary where I tell all the facts I have found about Jane Avril’s life in detail, starting from her birth in 1868 to her death in 1943.
I reference all the historical facts and plausible stories I had found up until 2022.
I often present info in front of places linked to the presented period in Jane’s life. The documentary was made while on a residency at Cité Internationale des Arts. It was shot in Paris and in Jouy-en-Josas, France.

The documentary is part of the larger body of work about my relation to French dance performer Jane Avril (1868-1943), who was a model and friend of artist Toulouse-Lautrec. I’ve felt connected to her personality and artistic expression ever since the very first time I saw images and photos of her in 2004.

Link to info and trailer (with French subtitles):
https://marianorrman.net/?page_id=1662

Premiere:
Jane Avril – The life of a Moulin Rouge Dancer

19 April - 18:15/6.15 pm
Free entry
Cinema Panora
Friisgatan 19D, Malmö
Arranged by: Malmö Art Museum
https://panora.se/events/jane-avril-the-life-of-a-moulin-rouge-dancer/
Language: English, with Swedish subtitles

Jane Avril – The life of a Moulin Rouge Dancer
26 April 19:00/7 pm
Free entry
Konstakademiens Hörsal/The Royal Academy of Fine Art
Fredsgatan 12, Stockholm
https://konstakademien.se/events/filmvisning-3/
Language: English, with Swedish subtitles

Upcoming in 2023:

29 April - 10 September
Nyförvärv – New Acquisitions
Homografiska Museet, Fengersfors, Sweden
https://homografiska.se/english

5 May – 6 June
ScandiLA, Galleri CC exhibits with Tiger Strikes Asteroid, Los Angeles
Galleri CC, Malmö

16 June – 24 September
Exhibition at Malmö Art Museum in connection to Barbro and Holger Bäckströms grant
Malmö, Sweden
https://www.mynewsdesk.com/se/malmo/images/maria-norrman-2613584

8 July – 14 August
Exchange exhibition with Galleri CC
Tiger Strikes Asteroid, Los Angeles, USA
https://www.tigerstrikesasteroid.com/

October
Residency at Zaratan, Lisbon, Portugal

--
www.marianorrman.net


*

If you will be in Berlin on Friday, April 21, 2023, please join me for the opening of An Imagination of Bodily Autonomy at Galerie im Saalbau from 6-10pm, curated by Nina Marlene Krauss and on view from April 22 - June 25, 2023.

This will be the first time I have shown Untitled [Senior Thesis]—a work I made as a student 15 years ago—since Roe v. Wade was overturned by the US Supreme Court. For an academic year, I self-inseminated around the time I was ovulating. Two weeks later I took an herbal abortifacient, after which I would experience cramps and heavy bleeding. This bleeding could have been either a normal period or a very early-stage self-induced miscarriage—the piece was intentionally crafted so that not even I knew which.

The work highlights the histories of how people have self-managed their reproductive capacities, as well as the ways in which the biological experience of our bodies is overwritten with interpretation: our own, but also the far more consequential interpretations of those more powerful than us. Whether a viewer sees something liberatory, monstrous, or mundane in the very long—and often quite boring—footage of me sitting in a bathtub bleeding is determined by their own act of reading, which is no more or less authoritative than my own.

Making this work instilled in me a deep and enduring conviction in the body as both a creative and political tool: one that highlights how we are already vulnerable in the social, legal, and cultural spheres, but can also enact unrealized possibilities. In my case, an imagination of total bodily autonomy—that I can use the capacity of my own body however I want. Now more than ever, I understand this work as something that is at its core utopian: an imagination and brief enacting of a future not yet here.

I'm grateful to be showing this work again. If you are around for the opening, I'd love to see you!

xAliza