Michelle Handelman
Irma Vep, The Last Breath (Poster), 2013
Digital print on poster paper
24 x 18 inches (60.96 x 45.72 cm)
Signed edition of 50

$ 55 unframed

This signed, editioned poster stems from Handelman’s 2013 multichannel video project Irma Vep, The Last Breath based on Musidora, the French silent film actress, and the character she is best known for, Irma Vep from the film Les Vampires (dir. Louis Feuillade 1915). Handelman explores living in the shadows, criminal anxiety and the relationship between the artist and her creation, both fictional and real. Irma Vep and Musidora are played by Zackary Drucker and Flawless Sabrina, two artists whose identities transgress the border of art and life. Together they have developed a relationship that documents a cultural evolution of gender. Musidora was an early 20th century feminist who took control of her career, not only acting, but also producing/directing films and theater. She was an artistic force of her time, producing several works by her lover Colette and having many documented affairs with both men and women. After financing dried up for her projects she lived in relative obscurity until her death in Paris in 1957.

Irma Vep, The Last Breath takes up motifs from the silent movie Les Vampires such as gazes, affected body language and the figure of the masked woman. It is shot on a starkly illuminated set that makes space for anxious projections of desire on the void that is Irma Vep — a space between genders, between vamps of the silent era and the contemporary queer — smashing the shiny veneer to reveal dark, subconscious layers of fluid identity.

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