jenny keane!
artist's statement
‘The body is a most peculiar ‘thing’, for it is never
quite reducible to being merely a thing; nor does it ever quite manage
to rise above the status of thing. Thus it is both a thing and a
nonthing, an object, but an object which somehow contains or
coexists with an interiority, an object able to take itself and others
as subjects, a unique kind of object not reducible to other
objects.’
Elisabeth Grosz
In my practice I am interested in the word ‘Horrific’.
Through Video Installation, I have been trying to explore its power to
embody fear, desire, disgust and revulsion.
At the moment I am completing my PhD in Fine Art in UU, Belfast.
Through my PhD research project, integrated alongside my personal art
practice, I am exploring the dichotomy of Fear and Desire, alongside
its connection to contemporary video art, focusing mainly on its
relation to female artists. My research topic is entitled,
‘Address(ing) Our Fears and Fascinations with the Boundaries of
Sexual Difference’ – The Horrific and Desire in
Contemporary Video Art.
Abjection and the Uncanny have been very influential in my practice, as
has Feminist thought as well as theories of Language and
Psychoanalysis. My work has always had references to contemporary
visual culture, and the most important influence is society’s
fascination with Horror Films. The theorist Barbara Creed discusses the
horror film as ‘constantly restaging the threat and rejection of
the feminine’. Images of blood, vomit, faeces, hair, etc. are
central to our socially/culturally constructed notions of the Horrific.
My work explores the self-portrait in an attempt to explore this
dichotomy between fear and desire, its relationship to language and
connection to the (female) body.
I am interested in Video’s ability to fragment and (de)construct
the body in space. The videos within the installations, express
themselves in performative actions, with a fixed camera. The short
pieces, generally created as multi-channel video installations, try to
present the body in relation to the Horrific. My video installations
are always focused on ‘liminality’ and the idea of
compulsive repetition; a loop that subverts narrative, this repeating
becoming a play between an internalised traumatic event and a sensual
meditation.