Rock´n´Roll 70, 2015
Edition 2/6 (+ 2 AP)
Chromogenic process (C-type prints) on paper, framed
130.5 x 191.2 x 3.2 cm.
Gillian WEARING (Birmingham, UK, 1963)
The British artist Gillian Wearing, winner of the Turner Prize in 1997, is well aware that the human emotions are universal and the reasons that trigger them and their interpretation depend on individual, cultural and social differences. Art for Wearing is a way to make social relations visible and to delve into the roles we play every day, the different masks we use, the identity we perceive and the one we project.
The work Rock ’n’ Roll 70 (2015) is situated within this line of reflection on the construction of personal identity and its perception – in this case that of the artist herself – and about the changes and transformations in the appearance of the human being produced by the passing of time, but also because of vital circumstances. She describes it as this: “I present the work as in a triptych with a single frame: in the first photograph I am fifty years old, in the next one, the image has aged [digitally] to seventy and the last one is blank with the words “me at 70 – 2034”. This space is left blank to be completed by the imagination, and in 2034 (fate permitting) it will be occupied by my real self with seventy years old.
Wearing’s artistic production leaves a deep personal and social trace; she gives a powerful discourse because it tackles such present – and still taboo – topics as violence, isolation and trauma from point of view of everyday life, and therefore, she has an enormous capacity to connect with the audience. These days, when millions of people around the world maintain the isolation dictated by the authorities – each with their more or less fortunate circumstances – they can be a good opportunity to get closer to the work of Gillian Wearing and discover with her how much it can connect us and how much less it separates us.
