Chimera (1999)

Creator:

Shemilt, Elaine

Contributor(s):

  • Duration: 8:23

    Year: 1999

    Original formats:

    Betacam SP

    Media types:

    Video

    Type of work:

    Single Screen

    Technical details: 16:9 Anamorphic Widescreen

    This is a single-channel version of the installation Chimera first exhibited at the Society of Scottish Artists, Annual Exhibition, Royal Academy Building, Edinburgh, 1998. It is the first manifestation of a collaborative programme initiated in 1997 between the two artists, bringing together experience and ideas from still and moving image-making.

    Within a sexually differentiating society all our experiences are shaped to a greater or lesser extent by socially determined gender positions.

    The body of a woman is colonised, appropriated, mystified, defined by male fantasy, but for an audience of women the same body can represent fertility, childbearing, or sexuality. This piece explores these representations as a differentiation from sexist usage.

    By exposing the patriarchal assumptions embedded within what we so often take for granted as normal or obvious, other ways of seeing and feeling are liberated. This work which reflects attitudes through certain acts and imagery also recognises a level of gratuitous nudity . There is the question of where this transgresses an unwritten code of what a reasonable person might take to be decent?

  • Chimera on Vimeo

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