Silent Stories
Format
Senior Art and Design Exhibition
Abstract/Artist Statement
Eliana Cetto’s photography and video series Silent Stories is a tableaux expression of a tortured fairytale character. Here, Alice characters have fallen down the rabbit hole, but instead of encountering a wonderland, they are escaping a claustrophobic, antiquated nightmare. In Unwonderland, innocent paper puppets try to flee their two-dimensional lives, and transform into living dolls. Their mannequin appearance and child-like vulnerability create personalities that meld traditional Alice and Snow White with a gothic damsel in distress. The emotional and narrative nature of the series explains the title Silent Stories, conveying preverbal messages of pain, longing, sorrow, love, and death. The transformation from marionette to girl is depicted as frantic, ghostly, and dream-like. The insertion of self-portraiture in the film adds to the dimensionality of the fairytale characters, becoming expressions of the artist’s innermost dialogues. Silent Stories suggests the possibilities of a postindustrial wasteland of obsolescence, while referencing contemporary modernity. Thus, the viewer is guided through an adventurous transformation of a beautiful and horrifying, postmodern voyage.Through the use of selective coloring and layers of texture, the artist is not only able to create an image of tension, similar to influential artists like Joel Peter-Witkin, Robert Park Harrison and Floria Sigismondi, but also creates a barrier from the voyeuristic viewer. Here, the dialectical beauty and damaged appearance of the digital prints and video, simultaneously lure and deflect the gaze from the protagonist, creating a deterrent from access to the fantasy world.
Location
Reynolds Gallery
Start Date
27-4-2009 9:00 AM
End Date
16-5-2009 5:00 PM
Silent Stories
Reynolds Gallery
Eliana Cetto’s photography and video series Silent Stories is a tableaux expression of a tortured fairytale character. Here, Alice characters have fallen down the rabbit hole, but instead of encountering a wonderland, they are escaping a claustrophobic, antiquated nightmare. In Unwonderland, innocent paper puppets try to flee their two-dimensional lives, and transform into living dolls. Their mannequin appearance and child-like vulnerability create personalities that meld traditional Alice and Snow White with a gothic damsel in distress. The emotional and narrative nature of the series explains the title Silent Stories, conveying preverbal messages of pain, longing, sorrow, love, and death. The transformation from marionette to girl is depicted as frantic, ghostly, and dream-like. The insertion of self-portraiture in the film adds to the dimensionality of the fairytale characters, becoming expressions of the artist’s innermost dialogues. Silent Stories suggests the possibilities of a postindustrial wasteland of obsolescence, while referencing contemporary modernity. Thus, the viewer is guided through an adventurous transformation of a beautiful and horrifying, postmodern voyage.Through the use of selective coloring and layers of texture, the artist is not only able to create an image of tension, similar to influential artists like Joel Peter-Witkin, Robert Park Harrison and Floria Sigismondi, but also creates a barrier from the voyeuristic viewer. Here, the dialectical beauty and damaged appearance of the digital prints and video, simultaneously lure and deflect the gaze from the protagonist, creating a deterrent from access to the fantasy world.