Ulrike Rosenbach
«Don't Believe I'm an Amazon»

My work is a confrontation with my own identity as a woman. It is critical and experimental work, caught up in a permanent discussion phase. Beyond the level of self-portrayal, the actions are descriptions of mental states, the retroactive products of social conditions. They are the disclosure of my personal make-up. Investigations of my own potential. One component of this subject matter is an artistic analysis of the cultural image of the woman in history. The woman as mother of the family, as a housewife, as a prostitute for the men, as a saint, a Virgin or Amazon.
'Don't Think I'm an Amazon' is a live video performance. The Amazon image is identified with the structures of power and competitive behaviour in a male-dominated society. Viewers of the video performance see me shooting from a distance 15 arrows at a Madonna reproduction ('Madonna im Rosenhag' by Stefan Lochner, 1451), and see this on video at the same time. Two video cameras separately record the Madonna reproduction and my face – but both images are shown on one monitor, delicately superimposed, one merging into the other. The video recording is my mental feedback. The Madonna image – representative, remote, beautiful, gentle and shy, a cliché traditionally used as a female image, rather vapid – is now part of me. The arrows striking the image hit me, too.


Ulrike Rosenbach

Ulrike Rosenbach