Makeover: Melania, 2017

Basel 2019
Makeover: Melania

michèle didier

Video/Film
0
Single-channel video, color, silent 1:00' Edition of 10 2017 A real pioneer in using performance as an artistic medium in itself, Martha Wilson stages her body, and as an actress would do, grinds and transforms herself, creating multiple self-portraits becoming subversive characters. She creates innovative photographic and video works exploring her female subjectivity through role-playing, costume transformations, and “invasions” of other people’s personae. Many of her photo-text pieces point to territory later mined by Cindy Sherman, among many other contemporary artists. Her role as an artist, but also as a federator has earned her to be considered by New York Times critic Holland Cotter to be as one of the half-dozen most important people for art in downtown Manhattan in the 1970s.