Video installation, 1’10”, 2009
In this ‘moving drawing,’ a woman’s hair covers her face like a flame. She appears to be on fire, caught between two tower-shaped frames.
‘Lady Liberty,’ the mother of freedom, would never fall, would she?
The work is a gift for the people of New York City.
Music: David Dramm
Art historian
Guest curator, and final image editor, translator, publicist and consultant in the field of modern art
“Arent Weevers takes great stories back to their essence: one character (occasionally two), one action, one story, no surroundings or decor. His extreme slow-motion images slow us up and pin us down.
The video image of Lady Liberty is transparent and almost overexposed. You have to search a bit for what you see, and then you recognize the contours of a woman, naked and vulnerable. She stands motionless, but her long hair dances round her head like a raging fire.
Who is she? A siren who lures us with her silence? Ophelia drowning, her hair spreading out around in the brook? The torch-bearing Lady Liberty of the Statue of Liberty in New York, lighting the world? (Indeed, Weevers calls his artwork a gift to the people of New York after 9/11). Or is she Mary again (the woman from the installation Mary!), but this time unfaltering and without the fall? Of course, she is ultimately every women; she is mankind, she is who we are.
In this way Weevers creates room for all our meanings, cutting across knowledge, cultures and religions. From the darkness of the world he takes the light of the enigma: clear, deep, mysterious and compelling.”
Is exhibited at: