Purple Diary
[July 7 2014]
Artist Katerina Jebb exclusively curates the July Purple TV Takeover
For this months Purple TV Takeover we invited artist, photographer, filmmaker, and Purple contributor Katerina Jebb to curate a selection of videos. This exclusive takeover coincides with the opening of her L’Arlesienne show, curated by Christian Lacroix and on view until September 21st, at the at Les Rencontres Arles Photography Festival 2014, Arles.
For L’Arlesienne Jebb was commissioned by Lacroix to portray the Arlésienne woman and has produced 47 new works following the theme of the exhibition, absence. The theme of the exhibition L’Arlésienne is taken from a novel written in 1869 by Alphonse Daudet. Lacroix plays on this literary term meaning someone or something which does not appear.
After a car accident in 1991 that paralyzed her right arm Jebb resolved the inability to hold a camera by employing machines to make life-size images, primarily self-portraits lying herself down on a high resolution scanning machine. Progressively, she diversified, posing subjects and objects, exploring the medium in parallel with the expanding possibilities in digital technology. Jebb proceeded to remove parts of the scanner to facilitate maximum extension of the subject.
Jebb’s work has since flourished from its photographic origins, proceeding to disrupt the boundaries between mediums. Her photography has made way for video art, installations and sculpture. In her work, Jebb considers the human condition with arrant sensitivity, offering the viewer a depiction of women that rejects the normalized, commercial female role. This can clearly be seen in her film series Simulacrum & Hyperbole, which premiered exclusively on purple.fr. Twelve insightful videos, each a comment on advertising, illusion and utopian dreams, parodying contemporary consumerism.
The first video in this takeover is Kienholz On Exhibit by June Steel, a film that documents Ed Kienholz‘s “Back Seat Dodge 38” that was on show The Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 1966.
