Michelle Williams
This photographic installation is constructed from the ephemeral landscape of two family archives – those of my grandmother and my grandmother-in-law – questioning the formation of female identity through inherited memory. These archives are both representative of the World War II period when traditional patriarchal values dominated. Through an iconographic analysis of the photographs and objects, the granddaughters of each of these women reenacted the portraits of their grandmothers to inhabit the inherited forms of their embodied traces.
The process of performance portraiture established a way of interpreting the archives as a means of embodying the subject. Like a method actor, the immersive nature of performance is to be the person in the family photograph, building ancestry relationships and intergenerational kinship between generations.
Through the presentation of highly detailed large-scale prints, the averted gaze and feminine styling and photographic language reveal an inescapable tension between the exterior and interior female self. The texture of the fabrics, the necklines and the precision of the hairstyles in the photographic aesthetic indicates a more significant and silent unknown that exists beyond the frame.
The square images of the objects from the archive are juxtaposed to amplify the external forces of governance and power that embody the memory of war, a testimony of the political and social context. The neutral white background references the colour of administration and neutrality, and makes way for political narratives.
Like a haunting ghost returned from the grave, a leather glove – believed to be stolen from a German soldier during the war – is depicted as an interactive 3D model, bringing focus to a sense of depth and physicality and indicating the value of space these objects take up in the world.
Mel as Omi, 2020
Photograph, pigment ink on cotton rag
1000mm x 750mm
104415, 2020
Scan, inkjet print pigment ink on cotton rag
300mm x 300mm
German Intelligence, 2020
Scan, inkjet print pigment ink on cotton rag
300mm x 300mm
Rations, 2020
Scan, inkjet print pigment ink on cotton rag
300mm x 300mm
Button, 2020
Scan, inkjet print pigment ink on cotton rag
300mm x 300mm
Invasion Currency, 2020
Scan, inkjet print pigment ink on cotton rag
300mm x 300mm
Identity, 2020
Scan, inkjet print pigment ink on cotton rag
300mm x 300mm
Me as Nan, 2020
Photograph, inkjet print on cotton rag
1000mm x 750mm
