Liliane Vertessen: A Love Supreme
Le Musée de la Photographie Charleroi, 2018
€35,00
Liliane Vertessen is one of the first Belgian artists to use their own body as an artistic medium. She builds installations around photographs of herself in varying roles. She might be a hooker, an innocent girl, a lady or a suicide. She does a balancing act between opposing extremes. Vulnerability and power, hardboiled and sweet, humiliation and worship.
During the early 70s, as a performer in a jazz group, Liliane Vertessen explores the provocative potential of self-portrayal on stage. This is the period when she begins to create self-portraits with a camera and a delay timer. The deceptive medium of photography provides her with the means to demonstrate and manipulate physical and sensual identity.
The black and white photographs are sometimes retouched with colour. Occasionally they are printed on enamel. She adds architectural elements to them: neon hightlights, draped materials, veils, fur, tulle, patent-leather, wooden sculptures, mirrors and marble. This allows them to grow into theatrical structures and prevents them from being locked away in a frame.
The early photographic work is generally charged with erotic overtones. They seem to be a romantic view of the world of prostitution. A neon tube is placed next to the perspex cabinet containing the photograph. The tube might be in the shape of an arrow or a line which flows the outline of the body. Sometimes works are spelled out, such as “Camp”, “Punk” and “Taboe”. Liliane Vertessen projects herself as the femme fatale. However the other extreme is also possible. In later work she shows herself as a saint, an angel, an innocent virgin. A certain mysterious ambiguity lies in the work of Vertessen: the provocative role play suggests a limitless exhibitionism. By playing these roles and hiding in a cliché of ‘The Woman’ she never really exposes herself and her actual identity remains elusive.
ISBN: 9782871830764
