Heather Sheehan
| Heather Sheehan | |
|---|---|
Self-portrait 2016, With an Ear to the Past (black and white photography)
|
|
| Born |
December 9, 1961 Mount Vernon, New York, United States |
| Nationality | American |
| Known for | Installation, Performance, Black and White Photography, Video art, Sculpture |
| Movement | Performance art Video art |
| Spouse(s) | Ivo Ringe |
Heather Sheehan (born December 9, 1961) is an American artist who lives and works in Cologne, Germany. In her work, she combines elements of sculpture, installation, performance, video art and black and white photography. Her work focuses on the development and presentation of individual mythologies.
Sheehan studied at the Parsons School of Design and the New School of Social Research in New York. Until 1994, she lived and worked in New York City, after which she emigrated to Cologne.
The term Individual Mythology, originally coined by Harald Szeemann on the occasion of the documenta 5, denotates a mode in which artists create works from their subjective inner perception as these relate, in their mythological qualities, to recurring events in human life, such as birth, death, etc. It follows that these art installations have a puzzling effect on the viewer. The ambiguity of the presented impulses invites reflection by, and resonance within, the viewers themselves. Sheehan's main interest lies in the narrative interweaving of complex interrelationships. Through her use of varied media, she achieves a multi-dimensional world of experience in which everything relates to the given locations and her studies of them.
For the exhibition alighting (2015), for example, Sheehan produced a video entitled alighting on the river, which mirrors the two main themes in the history of the city of Augsburg, namely the textile manufacturing and the river Lech, which flows through Augsburg. A woman in a plain dress walks barefoot, each step slow and deliberate, along a river bank. She wears a white kerchief and puts down under a willow, the coarse linen sack and black stone which she carried in her arms like a child or her own soul. Then, she turns her back to the viewer of the black-and-white video and steps into the water which soon reaches her thighs. Cut. The next scene shows nothing but water, the rushing river. The End. (in German: Eine Frau in einem schlichten Kleid geht barfuß, jeder Schritt langsam und tastend, an einem Flussufer entlang. Sie trägt ein weißes Kopftuch und legt unter einer Weide den Sack aus grobem Leinen und den schwarzen Stein ab, den sie wie ein Kind oder ihre Seele in den Armen trug. Dann dreht sie dem Betrachter des in Schwarz-Weiß gedrehten Videos den Rücken zu und schreitet ins Wasser, das ihr bald bis zu den Oberschenkeln reicht. Schnitt. Die nächste Einstellung zeigt nichts als Wasser, den dahinströmenden Fluss. Ende.)
...
Wikipedia