Ethel Lilienfeld
Invisible Filter - Installation - 2022
presented as part of the exhibition Panorama 24
The installation deals metaphorically with the relationship we have with our own image, which is nowadays being continuously archived and updated on social media.
The self-image developed in this way has given rise to an avatar, an “augmented” double that we have grown used to modelling by means of various virtual devices, notably digital filters.
In a contemporary, empty interior, overlooking a large bay window, two women of different ages with identical feature face each other around a tub in which the tears of the sobbing younger woman are collected. They will serve as a beauty elixir for the older woman.
In this familiar and disturbing nocturnal atmosphere, a making-up ritual takes place. What are we witnessing from the outside, through the glass window?
Evoking the myth of Narcissus, the tale of Snow White, Ingmar Bergman’s Persona and the digital filters used on social networks to enhance appearance, the videos alternate between desolation and appeasement. By creating a space of overlapping levels of reality, Invisible Filter disturbingly poses the eternal problem of self-image.
Ethel Lilienfeld
Ethel Lilienfeld (1995) is a French visual artist and video maker based in Brussels.
She graduated from La Cambre (Brussels) with a Master's degree in Visual Arts in 2020, then passed the Agrégation in 2021, and is continuing her work at Le Fresnoy -- Studio national des arts contemporains.
She has recently won several awards : production grant from the Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles (2022) ; Audience Award, Brussels Videonline Festival #2 at LA CENTRALE (2021) ; Cocof Award (French Community Commission) at Médiatine (2021) ; Prix des Amis de La Cambre (2020)
