Glauben Sie nicht, dass ich eine Amazone bin
Don't Believe I'm an Amazon

Description

"Video live action, created during an action
Ulrike Rosenbach shoots 15 arrows at the reproduction of the famous Madonna in the Rosenhag by Stephan Lochner. Two video cameras film the scene, including the target with the arrows hitting the target and the face of the woman shooting. Both shots are superimposed so that the arrows she shoots now also hit her.
Not only do they meet the historically grown image of women favored by men, the myth of femininity, chastity and purity of soul, they also meet the artist who, as a woman, also sees herself as participating in this traditional understanding of roles in her behavior. At the same time, she warns against the negative stereotype of an Amazon stylized as a man. Because this image of women is also simplified, unrealistic and misogynistic."
(Source: Gerhard Glüher (ed.), Ulrike Rosenbach : Wege zur Medienkunst 1969 bis 2004, Köln, Wienand, 2005, p.219.)

"For the black and white video piece „Don't believe I'm an Amazon“ Ulrike Rosenbach uses images of a performance with the same title by shooting fifteen arrows at a reproduction of “Madonna in the rose hedge”. On the screen one sees the head of a medieval Madonna from a painting by Stefan Lochner and simultaneously, superimposed, the face of the artist. In steady sequence Rosenbach shoots off fifteen arrows from a bow that hit the superimposed image of both faces.
The ambiguous connotation of the piece and the convincing simplicity of the conversion made it become one of the most successful works of the artist. In an early text she remarks: I identify myself both with the gentle image of the Madonna as well as with that of the aggressiveness of an amazon: the image of the Madonna, representative, inaccessibly beautiful, gentle, timid and as a cliché fairly fatuous is also part of me. When the arrows hit the image, they also hit me."
(Source, artist's website)

Publications and Periodicals which reference the work

Gerhard Glüher (ed.), Ulrike Rosenbach : Wege zur Medienkunst 1969 bis 2004, Köln, Wienand, 2005.

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