A triptych of video works exploring the themes of birth, death and resurrection.
Format: HDV 16:9 / sound. Duration: 10 mins
The Dance
In The Dance we see the skinny legs of a 7 day-old baby dancing on top of a gold-toothed skull in time to a Spanish guitar solo. The artists adopt the language of Vanitas painting: the skull is used as a symbol of transience, as has been explored in art many times, a mirror in which what we will become is reflected. Here the skull itself is reflected in the polished surface of the wood, the gold filling – a recurring symbol in Z+Z’s work – in its smile catching the light. When the skull is finally kicked away, a single grain of wheat falls from the bare eye socket. A macabre, yet jubilant celebration of the corporeal triumph over death.
Mother
Zatorski + Zatorski spent 3 days filming with the body of their recently deceased Grandmother. There is a dialogue between the lace-bound woman and a spider: the long, lithe limbs of the creature mirror the splindly, nimble, industrious fingers of the old lady. The spider carefully caresses each fold of lace as though spinning and weaving its way across the fabric. Spiders are regarded as symbols of the soul freed from the body, and as intermediaries between the two worlds of the human and the divine reality.
Cordero
Referencing the paintings of Zurbaran, Cordero is one of a series of sublimely beautiful “video paintings” made whilst Zatorski + Zatorski were artists in residence at Durham Cathedral. A bound lamb lies on a stone slab, its soft fleece and serene face bathed in dramatic chiaroscuro lighting. The static abdomen and the ring of crimson decorating the lamb’s nostril point to the absence of life. This utter tranquility is only broken momentarily by the arrival of a finch, both symbol of Christ in Western Art and the species which inspired Darwin’s theory of evolution: the death of God? The time-based nature of video is deftly employed to capture the utter stillness of death. There are exactly 2 minutes of silence. Cordero explores the limbo of that space between this world and the other.