EWVA European Women's Video Art

Klara KUCHTA

Key Works

 

Etre blonde c'est la perfection [Being blond is perfection] (1980)

11m 23s

Umatic Lo Band

 

This piece is part of a vast series devoted to the theme of hair, started by Klara Kuchta in 1975. In this performance, the artist, dressed in black, sits on the floor between two pieces of mirror. She leans towards her reflection while painting her hair while the voice of a young woman repeats tirelessly the same monologue, combining the blonde hair with the sun, gaiety, beauty and youth. This monologue intensifies with the affirmation: "Being blond is perfection." Even after breaking the mirror with a decided gesture, Kucha persists in her narcissistic pose to contemplate her own reflection, to fix her image in pieces. In a voice more and more monotonous, the young woman repeats words. Unfinished sentences become confused until the naive message of the beginning is distorted. However, at the end, it repeats in the manner of a continuous refrain, shifted in relation to its actions marked by ruptures and changes: "The beauty of the hair is its blonde, being blonde is perfection".

 

Irene Schubiger, 2011 (www.sikart.ch)

 

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