WORK
[2010]
Twenty Days of Being Silent
The essentially non-autobiographical series of self-portraits shot in the course of twenty days during which the artist abstained from speaking balances between documentary photography and performance. Originally conceived as an exercise in style, the self-portraits ended up recording a subversive experiment with a lost sense of identity.
The body, deprived of other ways of communication than making itself visible, over-reliant on gesture and expression and permanently aware of its forced muteness, becomes a scene for an experience that is at the same time mental and organic. Arranged chronologically, Twenty Days seems to obliterate any chronology, resisting the passage of time. Instead, the visceral feel of the body takes over with a rhythm of its own that denies any existential or teleological interpretation. The staged, thoroughly constructed look of the photographs becomes an anti-statement in a rather Brechtian "here-I-stand" manner.
The copyright belongs to Lena Aliper
