I had no previous knowledge about them, nor did I grasp what kind of art they were doing when flying solo. But I was sure of that it wouldn't be boring.
Testaments Betrayed is what she calls the exhibition, mixed with a new work and older works. She works in moving visuals, video art, and engages the viewers in race, gender, ethnicity and identity issues. I know I know, when I first read that, I thought, oh that's new... and wasn't to keen on that simple description which is inserted in most of the contemporary art today. But I had to go to the exhibition to see for myself, and most of all I wanted to meet her again. (social networking is crucial in the art world.) In the rooms and in the cathedral of Röda Sten I found video art that moved me. Many times, here comes a confession, video art has been much of a monotonous bore, but not this. She's not just making arty videos and playing hard to get, well she does that too, but it's not entirely abstract video art. She adresses the issues directly and far more visual than I'd like them to.
For instance in one of her works, Bleeding Men, she has several dark colored men lying in a what I assume is a bathroom floor, a lot like the showers in gymhalls, anyway, they are lying there all dressed in white tunics, and then you see them cutting themselves in the arm. It was like it was one person and you just saw them in different angles at once, and you see them bleeding and in the end they stand up walk away and all there's left is pools of blood on the floor. I actually saw it in reverse order, it was even more powerful. I walked in on the video, going in loops, at the end of it, so I saw the pools first and then the beginning with them lying there. That's what so unpredictable with video art, you can catch fragments of it if you don't watch the whole or start from the beginning or get another experience from it that intended.
Another video work is White Women. Where several black men sitting around a table eating and telling stories of their first encounters with white women. The hierarchy, patriarchy and and race-difference is discussed without disguise. They talk and laugh freely about these white women as their conquers, encounters and broken loves and so on. They all wear the same red striped shirt and the camera is placed in the middle rotating as one of them is telling their own story. You're not so sure if it's OK to laugh at the stories they are telling, you are not sure if to identify with them or with the women they are talking about or as another authority to morally judge them. Because many of the stories are quite discriminating, both in race and in gender and at times offensive but also hilarious.
One with dual screens which I did not catch the name of was screening two different landscapes but same motifs. One of Sweden and one of another what we might call third world country. Where the difference between two women in respectively country is shopping for groceries and another screen of the accomodation, graffiti on the walls, the sea, the trees. What can be found in one country can be found in another, but there's still a significant difference. But also very much like the other.
There were several works which I have not covered here and those I did were only fragments. My poor description of this exhibition does not do it justice and I have even left out one of the great parts, the building itself. So go there if you can. It's worth it.
