Eli Cortiñas: Confessions with an Open Curtain, 2011
Women Video Work(s)
Date: 2011
Material/Technique: Video, color, stereo, 4:3
Copyright: © Eli Cortiñas
The artist analyses the definition of the female role in film by way of a new re-composition of found footage material. The collage functions as burning lens for a type of made-up married woman who, when alone in the decor of a boudoir, abandons herself to her desperation. The affected softness of female film roles is highlighted by way of offsetting the arrangement of the soundtrack. Savvy monologs are nevertheless held on the limited possibilities of women and their hopeless professional ambitions. The consistently depicted rear views of the female protagonists blur the boundaries between object and subject: the anonymized women appear unified. The motif of the curtain remains ambivalent: as a symbol of separation it is unclear as to whether, as the female sphere, the private remains closed or whether it is opened to become public space.
Eli Cortiñas
Eli Cortiñas (born in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, in 1976) studied at the Cologne Academy of Media Arts as well as at the European Film College in Ebeltoft, Denmark. She was a scholar at Villa Massimo in Rome, in 2014, and has exhibited her work at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, at the Museum Ludwig in Cologne and at the Wilhelm-Hack-Museum Ludwigshafen. Her art casts new light on the application of cinematic stylistic mediums, and treats issues relating to social role models.
http://www.soycapitan.de/eli-cortinas.php
Text and Biography: Sophie Leschik
Material/Technique: Video, color, stereo, 4:3
Copyright: © Eli Cortiñas
The artist analyses the definition of the female role in film by way of a new re-composition of found footage material. The collage functions as burning lens for a type of made-up married woman who, when alone in the decor of a boudoir, abandons herself to her desperation. The affected softness of female film roles is highlighted by way of offsetting the arrangement of the soundtrack. Savvy monologs are nevertheless held on the limited possibilities of women and their hopeless professional ambitions. The consistently depicted rear views of the female protagonists blur the boundaries between object and subject: the anonymized women appear unified. The motif of the curtain remains ambivalent: as a symbol of separation it is unclear as to whether, as the female sphere, the private remains closed or whether it is opened to become public space.
Eli Cortiñas
Eli Cortiñas (born in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, in 1976) studied at the Cologne Academy of Media Arts as well as at the European Film College in Ebeltoft, Denmark. She was a scholar at Villa Massimo in Rome, in 2014, and has exhibited her work at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, at the Museum Ludwig in Cologne and at the Wilhelm-Hack-Museum Ludwigshafen. Her art casts new light on the application of cinematic stylistic mediums, and treats issues relating to social role models.
http://www.soycapitan.de/eli-cortinas.php
Text and Biography: Sophie Leschik