Since
her first seminal piece, 'Disclosures: A Photographic Construct',
1982, Julie Rrap has sought to 'disclose' the human body, and
unravel the ways in which it has been represented throughout
key phases in the history of art and perception. For the most
part, Rrap has used her own body in photographs, videos and sculptures.
This is a performing body - not in the sense that the artist
documents performances per se - rather, it is a body that enacts
various postures.
Rrap's representation of the body is never comfortable, for
it is a figure that has often been dissected into parts, distorted,
and at times squeezed into the stance of the artist's muse. Even
when Rrap uses the male form, it has been 'rrapped' (sic), as
it were, around a rock or landscape formation. Rrap's works go
to the heart of the photographic paradigm - they deliberately
occupy an ambivalent zone between documentation and invention.
The 'performance' is a continual shuttling between the reality
of the exposed body, and the trickery offered by the photographic
apparatus and its more recent digital permutations.
For Julie Rrap. photography has always been an art of both the
observer and the observed. One cannot shoot an image innocently.
To shoot a camera, and to take aim is, in a sense, to both capture
and target the subject. It is perhaps unsurprising therefore,
that her latest series, 'Soft Targets', takes titles from specialist
firearm terminology. For just as the body is dissected by the
camera, so too the firearm aims to splinter the body. Just as
the act of photography is performative, so too the act of shooting
a gun. The comparisons highlight the ethics at stake in photography
- what does it mean to 'shoot' an image - particularly in the
context of the professional and amateur war photography that
has emerged from Iraq.
'Soft Targets' are sumptuous life-size works on watercolour
paper. The body has been photographed with a stark white light,
accentuating it as flesh. The artist's face is averted, underscoring
the significance of the body as target. Careful observation of
the images reveal that while the shadows of limbs remain, the
corresponding body parts have been erased. These shadows are
like phantom limbs. In 'Fishtailing', the shadow becomes a mirror:
the artist's face is captured at the tip of the reflection, as
if the figure is about to dive into a pool of water. But the
shadow does not in itself mirror the body, and one of the arms
has been removed - or has it? The shadow takes on the fullsome
properties of the body, while in images like 'Hangfire', the
body itself is reduced to an almost emaciated state.
The relationship with the technical titles of these works is
not illustrative; rather the association is often humorous. While
the term 'cheekpiece' refers to that part of the gun that rests
against the facial cheek, Rrap's camera accentuates her own anterior
'cheeks'. And while 'Pump' refers to a moveable 'forearm' device
on the gun, the image depicts the artist in the pose of a push-up.
Humour does not, however, belie the serious nature of these photographs.
The spontaneity of the poses, their almost dance-like quality,
transform the entire body into a gesture - the artist's gesture.
Once again, the image shuttles between documentation and artifice,
reflecting upon the dance we all do between the ethics and aesthetics
of 'representation'.
Victoria Lynn
Victoria Lynn is a curator and writer currently living
in Sweden.
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