RITES OF PASSAGE

RITES OF PASSAGE is a new work that focuses on the concept of boundaries and the ritual of reconstruction. The concept of the work revolves around the reconstruction of memory and identity from a fragmented narrative, presenting the viewer with an alternative landscape.

Through the exploration of different visual media – video, installation, photography, and performance, Catalina Swinburn engages the viewer in a language between a real event and its fictional representation. Emotionally charged images created with metaphoric and symbolic stylistic manipulations powerfully challenge the “reality as representation” the artist is part of. The body of the artist is presented as a metaphor of where representations of difference and identity are inscribed, showing the tensions between the experience of women and cultural meanings that are inscribed on the female body to express social, political and cultural ideas. The actions are photographed and recorded from the sky, using the same technology that constantly monitors political borders. This device of high technology distorts the “perspectives of seeing” – a key theme within the artist’s research.

RITES OF PASSAGE distinguishes between “the secular” and “the sacred sphere”, the magic-religious separation between the profane and the sacred.” In this work the territorial passage, is a crossing of borders into a culturally different region, such as one where a different religion prevail.