I just came across some assignments and short essays I wrote whilst completing my MA in Visual Studies at Queen's University, Belfast last year. I thought it might be interesting to post some of them here. This assignment was to write a few short paragraphs on a visual artist who has influenced our own work.
I would like to discuss the work of the Finnish artist Elina Brotherus and the essay written on her work by Val Williams which appears in "The Citigroup Private Bank Photography Prize 2002".
Much of Brotherus' work focuses on her experience of living in France as a foreigner and the resulting feelings of inadequacy. The resulting images encompass themes of cultural isolation, loneliness, social change and personal trauma. Throughout many of the photographs there is a sense of linguistic and cultural imprisonment; Brotherus has spoken of her frustration with the lack of social mobility which she experienced in France as a result of her inability to communicate in French. This disorientation arising from an unfamiliar cultural signage is what initially interested me in her work.
In Epilogue (page 43) we see a visual representation of these restrictions, the chains of cultural isolation which physically hold and control Brotherus, and the resulting suffering and despair. Le Printemps (page 53) was the first image of Brotherus' that I saw and I immediately reacted to the image and felt attracted to it even before knowing anything of the artist or the context of her work.
I find that Brotherus' work is very relevant to my own preoccupations and interests and consequently to my artistic output. I experienced a very similar phenomenon to that which Brotherus expresses through this work, when I spent two months living in Paris, initially not having any knowledge of the language. I had never before experienced living in a country for a relatively long period of time with such a limited grasp of the language. Even though I had previously spent time in South America and Europe, I had studied the languages of the countries I lived in and therefore found assimilation to be much more straightforward. I am fascinated by national identities and how linguistic and cultural boundaries shape and blur these. Disorientation, a lack of discourse and the sensation of being in a foreign and hostile space are evident in this work and are themes which I feel I can identify with and which greatly interest me.
[Brotherus uses] photography to provide a visual key to a shifting and unsettling range of emotions and events
Val Williams
Much of Brotherus' work focuses on her experience of living in France as a foreigner and the resulting feelings of inadequacy. The resulting images encompass themes of cultural isolation, loneliness, social change and personal trauma. Throughout many of the photographs there is a sense of linguistic and cultural imprisonment; Brotherus has spoken of her frustration with the lack of social mobility which she experienced in France as a result of her inability to communicate in French. This disorientation arising from an unfamiliar cultural signage is what initially interested me in her work.
In Epilogue (page 43) we see a visual representation of these restrictions, the chains of cultural isolation which physically hold and control Brotherus, and the resulting suffering and despair. Le Printemps (page 53) was the first image of Brotherus' that I saw and I immediately reacted to the image and felt attracted to it even before knowing anything of the artist or the context of her work.
I find that Brotherus' work is very relevant to my own preoccupations and interests and consequently to my artistic output. I experienced a very similar phenomenon to that which Brotherus expresses through this work, when I spent two months living in Paris, initially not having any knowledge of the language. I had never before experienced living in a country for a relatively long period of time with such a limited grasp of the language. Even though I had previously spent time in South America and Europe, I had studied the languages of the countries I lived in and therefore found assimilation to be much more straightforward. I am fascinated by national identities and how linguistic and cultural boundaries shape and blur these. Disorientation, a lack of discourse and the sensation of being in a foreign and hostile space are evident in this work and are themes which I feel I can identify with and which greatly interest me.
[Brotherus uses] photography to provide a visual key to a shifting and unsettling range of emotions and events
Val Williams
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