Participating Artists
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Facelift Mommy, 1998 (video still), video, single channel projection, 1:15 minutes, sound, Doron Sebbag Art Collection, ORS Ltd., Tel Aviv
Robert Melee
Robert Melee‘s videos look like a carny documentation of some campy performance or parodic spectacle. The "star" of many of his works has been his mother, a sixtyish, heavily made-up woman wearing a flashy wig and seductive, provocative clothing. Her eccentric appearance defies any warm connotations to the concept of motherhood. Drunk, she would model for him as a retired drag queen, parading her ageing body in front of him. Their bizarre mother-son relationship was a central source of inspiration for Melee's work in its earlier stages. In Facelift Mommy (1998), the two collaborated in a surreal act: the mother is shown rubbing the makeup off her face and onto a sheet of translucent Plexiglass with her son's help. His relation to her sick, old and withering body situates Melee within the discourse of the abject. Going through the gutter, Melee presents an alternative maternal model which undermines any and all cultural conventions and ridicules the image of the great, merciful Mother.
Born in New Jersey, 1966; lives and works in New York
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