Whites going on
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st review 81 2005 c 2005 Feminist Review. 0141-7789/05 $30 www.feminist-review.com (119–121)
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When viewed through the veil of prosthetics, the realm of selves, the composite or the multiple, challenges ideas around representation. Shot on location in Mexico DF, Kahnawake (Quebec), Amsterdam, and Banff (Alberta), Whites Going In mimics the essay film to challenge whether the concept of Otherness may be reconceived as Whiteness, albeit prosthetically enhanced, so as to problematize its status as an unchallenged construct that moves through time and space. With each location, the notion of privilege is apprehensively entertained through implanted points of insertion. Whites Going In weaves a multi-layered dystopic narrative of a foreign woman struggling to make sense of her own status in face of the Other.
The use of applied prosthetics opens the dialogue to speak about the ways in which Whiteness operates. The work attempts to address the problematic of giving voice, on behalf of the Other, or as stand-in for the Other, especially as it relates to ‘expert’ research in the fields of ethnography, anthropology, and sociology. Whites Going In challenges the idea that living people are being actively written out of access to their own culture, and points towards a type of self-reflexive accountability that acknowledges the increasing polarity of representation as an axis for privilege.
Whites Going In. Still from dvd (05:50 min), Mara Verna, 2004.
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feminist review 81 2005
Whites going on
This approach, however contentious, continues to inspire an ongoing need within my work to search out the very moments, which bring forth our fundamental need to understand, and be understood, in spite of the seemingly insurmountable forces that complicate this process. It can only be at such vulnerable points that one can begin to reassess and develop new modes for communication. Here, the question of self-representation and representing others is a problem that needs to be kept alive, held captive in the struggle to challenge where art is located and for whom it is intended.
author biography Mara Verna has participated in solo exhibitions, group shows, and festivals within Canada and abroad, namely South Africa, France, Great Britain, Germany, Mexico, and Slovenia. Some notable exhibitions to date include Sorry to Disturb (Bag Factory Gallery, Johannesburg, 2001), invited Keynote Speaker for Fieldworks: Dialogues between art and anthropology (Tate Modern, London, UK, 2003), Rien n’a e´te´ perdu (La Centrale Gallery, Montreal, 2003), and Whites Waiting (City of Women Festival, Ljublijana, 2004). Mara has participated in various artists’ collectives, residencies, and workshops, including Public Eye (Cape Town), The Bag Factory (Johannesburg), Les Inclassables (Paris), Localismos (Mexico DF), and IntraNation, Banff Centre for the Arts (Canada). She works within the realm of public art while simultaneously directing the live art document using digital media. www.maraverna.com www.hottentotvenus.com doi:10.1057/palgrave.fr.9
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