Nadja
Bool works at the intersection of historical research, design, and psychology (the latter from her training as an art educator). In Nadja the artist collaged together imagery from two distinct historical and cultural sources. First, Bool appropriated a 1925 photograph showing the debut of a new, modernist-inflected mannequin at the Decorative Arts exposition in Paris. On top of this streamlined Döppelganger, she collaged the repeated motif of a fruit bat from the ceiling of a Kwoma ceremonial house in Papua, New Guinea (located in our Gallery 354)—a sacred space for men’s initiation rites where women were not allowed. In titling the work after the elusive protagonist of André Breton’s 1925 Surrealist novella, Bool incisively wed disparate though parallel images about women as a surface for psychological projection into a fragmented whole with great power and mystery.
Artwork Details
- Title: Nadja
- Artist: Shannon Bool (Canadian, born 1972)
- Date: 2014
- Medium: Gelatin silver print
- Dimensions: Image: 44 × 27 in. (111.8 × 68.6 cm)
Frame: 44 3/4 × 27 1/2 in. (113.7 × 69.9 cm) - Classification: Photographs
- Credit Line: Purchase, Vital Projects Fund Inc. Gift, through Joyce and Robert Menschel, 2015
- Object Number: 2015.448
- Rights and Reproduction: © Shannon Bool
- Curatorial Department: Photographs
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