Supersweet

Hair and (Lots of) Birds


Dodging in the Big Smoke

Céleste Boursier-Mougenot

Spring has arrived, and despite the BA strike(s), tourists still seem to have taken over the streets of London. SUPERSWEET’s Poonperm Paitayawat, avoiding touristic stampedes, recommends loitering into these backstreets and checking out some fresh, über-cool exhibitions. Perchance you’re in the East, take refuge at the Barbican’s walk-through aviary of musical birds, and as for West End cruisers, visit this lair of hoe -sorry, we meant “hair”- just a few minutes’ walk from London’s Red Light district.

The Night I Became a Doll, 2009

Birds? Any pun intended? NOT! We mean birds, literally. Very recently, French artist Céleste Boursier-Mougenot has transformed the Barbican’s Curve Gallery into a temporary home of forty zebra finches. Visitors are led through a dark tunnel whose walls are projected with moving images of guitarists’ hands mastering the instruments. A few steps away, at the end of the tunnel, there is light—warm and bright. There are, also, these playful finches dodging around.

What’s the twist? Instead of giving the birds trees to perch and twigs to nest, Boursier-Mougenot equips this aviary with electric and bass guitars, cymbals as feeders containing water and seeds and quite a few amplifiers. The result is the accidental soundscape manipulated by these tiny plumed creatures once they feel the need to swallow around and land on the chords, which seems superbly well in tune with the birds’ mellifluous chirping. Boursier-Mougenot marries the world of sombre, adrenaline-boosting music with that of the tranquil natural rendering us with a vision of a utopia of simultaneous melodies. Is this animal cruelty? No, if you don’t stamp onto the finches that peck your shoestrings.

To please her mother, the girl stops eating, moving, speaking. Very slowly, she turns into a doll, ironically only to be cast away by her mother.

Time Reversal, 2009

In contrast with the optimistic natural-ness of Boursier-Mougenot’s live installation at the Curve Gallery, Alice Anderson’s Time Reversal at Riflemaker recounts much more sinister tale of family angst, psychological suppression and unnatural-ness of desire. If you are not sure where the gallery is, we’d say, look for the visually imposing locks of doll’s hair hanging out of the first-floor window. The hair goes back inside the building, and like undaunted cobwebs, freezes itself in the air, on the ceiling and floor. Here, time itself has stopped, and the mystery is awaits an unfolding.

The partial revelation comes in form of a 9-minute film “The Night I Became a Doll,” which is a sequel to Anderson’s former work “The Doll’s Day” (2008) and complements the intellectual, conceptual framework of her gargantuan installation Time Reversal. Here the pseudo-autobiography of the artist is made explicit, a story of a child hated by her psychotic mother. To please her mother, the girl stops eating, moving, speaking. Very slowly, she turns into a doll, ironically only to be cast away by her mother. This fractured family life is a fictitious parallel of Anderson’s childhood during which her parents separated; herself emigrated to France with her mother and was forbidden to speak about her father again.

Following Anderson’s former work, the father doll fades into the background in “The Night I Became a Doll”. The unfolding of Anderson’s childhood trauma through her works is far from straightforward. It is, rather, psychological and relational. The factual relevance and verisimilitude is displaced by the emotive restraints, the frozen frustration of time, and the psychological discomfort. But, whichever you are in for, please do not attempt to climb the hair or feed the finches!

Words: Poonperm Paitayawat
Photography: Lyndon Doug for Céleste Boursier-Mougenot, Courtesy of The Curve, Barbican Art Gallery; Alice Anderson’s Time Reversal, Courtesy of Alice Anderson and Riflemaker