Pénétrations
This dual channel video installation investigates and dissects the sub-textual codification of the female form evidenced within mainstream cinema. Rondeau has culled hours of footage from Science Fiction films; an archive that is both rich in imagery relating to the strength of female protagonists and, at the same time, preoccupied with the spectacle of the female body mapped, through probing, prodding and manipulation. In both circumstances, there is an integral dialectic of the macabre and the sexualized wrapped in a vocabulary authentic to the Sci-Fi - a genre, to a large extent, built on concepts of gender bias, objectification, titillation and colonization.
The installation
is assembled as a circular narrative designed to examine the dichotomy of self
and other; underscoring notions of the self as both embodied and alienated,
solid yet malleable, hermetic but porous. These female protagonists are
extracted from their original context, liberated from a cinematic matrix and
free to weave and transform between and within each other, blurring the
boundaries between self and other. These short vignettes are digitally
manipulated and rhythmic, punctuated by moments of black and underscored by an
immersive soundtrack.
Rondeau has
spawned a bewilderingly layered and fragmented portrait of the female body as
fluid and temporal. Her protagonists are in a constant state of flux, always at
the threshold between estranged experience and transformative potential and
serve as a ceaseless examination of the corporeality as a constant regenerative
process.
The artist would
like to acknowledge the Ontario Arts Council for support in the realization,
and presentation, of this project.
