La Femme de nulle part, doggerfisher, Edinburgh (23/02–28/04/2007)
With Anita Di Bianco & Rosalind Nashashibi. Curated by Lucy Skaer.
With: Sophie Macpherson
La femme de nulle part (The woman from nowhere) brings together the work of Anita Di Bianca, Sophie Macpherson and Rosalind Nashashibi. It maps connections between the fin de siecle malaise of the Viennese bourgeoisie and the warring, saccharine hostilities found in the theatrical stagings of such plays as Jean Genet’s Le Bonnes (The maids). The exhibition’s title is taken from the French film director, Louis Delluc’s 1922 film, La Femme de nulle, in which the main protagonist suffers from amnesiac, disruptive wanderings. There is also the added influence of anxious theatricality and mannered hysteria as found in the historical-mythological, famously grueling, 1928 silent film The Passion Joan of Arc, by the Danish film maker Carl Dreyer.
Les Bonnes is a text that has fascinated Macpherson, with its layers of role-play, posturing and potential for criminality. Macpherson’s constructions suggest theatrical sets and conjures’ apparatus, where the onlookers desire to interpret trickery as magic, when disbelief is suspended. Macpherson’s work has a complex relationship to performance, and to realities that flip to theatricality.
Sophie Macpherson (born 1972) studied at Glasgow School of Art and lives and works in Glasgow.