Self Portrait

Video, color, 3'59'' Stereo audio 2012 Building one's body, or rather challenging it with restrictions, rules, and discipline, and through this training addressing the ever-problematic construction of one's self-image: this is the thread that unites Francesca Arri's works. A logic that begins with a profound connection with one's own flesh, the desire to overcome its limits, its stalemate, and its analysis, transforming the boundary into an educational space for analyzing every experience to achieve a shared synergy through macabre irony. Dorian Gray, in Oscar Wilde's story, imprisons his shame along with his portrait to protect himself from the fear of the transience of his beauty. Francesca Arri sketches her own portrait with a video performance in which the artist mocks her own image as if it were a mirror, pointing her finger at it as a warning and challenge to herself and others. Laughter first engages us, then embarrasses and annoys us. The performer lays bare his own shame and ours. Is he laughing at his image or at the viewer? The grotesque image of our times is reflected in the lens of a video camera.