Rebecca brodskis

Current work:

When I tell you Knot

Recently I have worked a lot around the subject of knots looking at different objects such as hair or shoe laces. How can one make knots or undo knots? What is a knot?

I have interview many people asking the same simple question over and over: “When I tell you knot, what comes into your mind?” and collected a lot of interesting answers such as tree, brain, intestine, problems, negation…

I have also filmed people doing their shoe laces looking at the different ways people have to tie knots and untie them.

Looking at hair one easy way to undo the knots is to shave it.  For women, hair is a symbol of seduction and shaving it could represent the lost of feminity.

Looking through out history: People’s head were shaved by the Nazis in the concentration camps, some French women were shaved after the second world war as a punishment for having sexual relations with germen soldiers and in the end poverty forcing women to shave their head for wigs.

For this project I have chosen to work with video mixing archives images and some of my own footage focussing a lot on the image aesthetic.

Being originally a painter I try as much as possible to treat the moving image as a canvas by retouching it and transforming it. 

 mainly working on video project that you can watch by clicking here:
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RW...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hp4G...

Dynamite factory project:

Lately, I have been working on a project based in a disused dynamite factory. This undertaking was a filmed performance using paint and looking at how to build an art piece considering the given space and the present objects (old machinery, containers…). I like to have boundaries when I work, experimenting different ways to use them, finding a tactic to include the restrictions in the final achievement.

On the same basis I have also produce a series of photographs, reusing them and mixing them with paint in various installations and mixed media pieces.

My art is mainly abstract. When I am not working in a space fill with random objects, I try to introduce some artificial limits on the canvas whether by recycling some old ones or by not controlling the paint. I like being led by the consistency of the paint and the fabric, not knowing where and when the paint will stop dripping.  I enjoy not being in command, the way it brings pressure and anxiety into the work.