I want to abuse – I don't like

Natasha Nedelkova is our guest artist on the web, during May 2015. You could watch her work  I want to abuse- I don't like, as she is taking part in Programme09: Portrait / Self-portrait Antiportrait.

A few months ago, the association Videographies Liege, a pioneer in the issue of video art in the Belgian public television and focused on the promotion of the visual arts, invited us to participate as jury in the Eurovideo festival, a European meeting focused on new audiovisual languages based in Belgium. We had the opportunity to watch the work of 24 emerging artists who participated in the meeting. Natasha Nedelkova work is one of those artist and we thought instantly that we may invite her to join the program on Portrait / Self-portrait / Antiportrait.

Indeed, Natasha Nedelkova’s work has a lot of portrait, this invented word that helps us reflect on how we build our portrait through denying, disappearing, from the picture, from the screen, from the text. Built through the void, Oteiza theorized about it.

There is a text written by the French writer Éduard Levé precisely entitled  Self -portrait, lists proposed as a way of telling. And I copy from page 17:

“I’ve seen the countryside, the mountains, the sea. I’ve seen lakes, rivers, streams, creeks, waterfalls. I have seen volcanoes. I’ve seen estuaries, coasts, islands, continents. I have seen caves, canyons, chimneys. I’ve seen deserts, beaches, dunes. I have seen the sun and the moon. I saw stars, comets, an eclipse. I’ve seen the Milky Way (…) “.

The collection could go to infinity, and does so throughout this book-portrait, with a succession of lists and collections of things seen, experienced, felt, hated, loved, lost, found, and so on. Collection as a portrait of the collector, could tell it this way, yes. And now it’s time to summon two other major collectors, Joe Brainard with his book I remember and the subsequent review by Georges Perec, Je me souviens.

Natasha Nedelkova continues the tradition of the lists as a way of self-portrait: from”I agree” she switches to “I like it”, which is more contemporary, more 2.0, more for social networks. Saying no as a form of construction. Saying no as a way to assert ourselves. Contradictory, yes. Ironic, yes. Contemporary.