Fang Lu

Cinema

In the work Cinema, Fang Lu explores in a meticulous yet un-dramatic — almost casual — way of how “the self” in our today’s life is a controlled and staged construction of oneself. What appears at first sight to be a not unusual performance of self-choreography, becomes at a second glance a disturbing portrait of a – female – persona brought to life under contemporary conditions of attractiveness, anxiety and narcissism. Unlike her previous works, which duel more on the internal, surrealistic human conditions, this seven-channel work elevates the individual relationship with its socio-political environment to a more recognizable and appealing set of behavioral actions of self-awareness and self-inflicted anguish. Cinema, as a “portrait”, is staged in the fashion of creating a self-image in the politically guarded societal arena of surveillance and social networks. In this media oriented process of constructing a self-image, one experiences over time the loss of one’s, authentic, identity. In that sense Cinema is a “melancholic” portrait.