Mädchen Vivi
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Updated: 13 hours ago
Mädchen Vivi is an experimental performance-based photographer and video artist, often combining digital and analogue film, who has exhibited in Brazil, Portugal, Romania, and Spain. Notable exhibitions include Cecília Cultural Association (for which she has also won an award),Trackers, Estúdio Lâmina, and Virada Cultural. She has been published by Peach Mag and RageZine, both based in New York.
The photography of Mädchen Vivi is a conceptual approach based in horror and an overt-rejection of polite-feminism. In her works, she describes her philosophical approach as “survival feminism”, one which considers those on the margins, such as sex workers and queer individuals. Mädchen Vivi’s portfolio is anti-patriciarchal and glorious in conveying symbols of feminity as tools of irony and mockery of subjugation. Her works offer no apologies, they are brutal, confrontational, and impactful. In the photographs, we will sometimes find glorifications of glamour, while in others, performative still-lifes, set design, and actors engaged in a dichotomy between exemplifying beauty and signifying the macabre.
Searching through Mädchen Vivi portfolio we will find lingerie strapped onto electronics or pillows or lockets of hair and lipstick behaving as phallic symbols or even paired with a mystique of nihilistic suicide applied to razors and knives. As a result, these works are anti-commercial and avant-garde to a maximum capacity. The exploration of reversing power structures through symbols of feminity becomes apparent in her uniquely ironic, yet provocative approach to yield a response from the viewer. Some the pieces are more subtle and poetic, such as a distant tiny view of stiletto pink shoes across an industrial street, barely noticeable in the photo but notable in color and central composition. Mädchen Vivi will use the bodies of models to express extremities of performance, such as smearing glitter over a woman’s chest, captured in light as if to appear like extreme sweat, topped off with a pack of Asian-brand cigarettes between her breasts. She will capture models in hotels and against strips of neon signs and satin, as if to glorify the symbols of sex and sex workers, deserving of dignity and even glorification.
Teresas Marcas De Uma Fuga OBRA (pictured above) is a performative photograph of an asymmetrical assemblage frame made up of crystals or glass, followed by an oval portrait of a woman’s stomach covered in tattoos. The markings on the body seem to overtake the actual figure in the composition, with only the belly button confirming this is a woman’s torso. The sparkles of precious glass or crystals indicate glamour and mysticism of the tattooed female form.
With an uncompromising gift for wit and fearlessness, Mädchen Vivi drives photography to have a purpose beyond documentation and aesthetics. Her touching upon concepts such as horror, nihilism, disfiguration, mystique, glamour, sex workers, and queerness reflects a willingness to not only cross boundaries, but ultimately annihilate them. These works are just as philosophical as they are poetic in their empowerment of women and rejection of overarching patriarchal institutional systems and structures. By using clever props, performative action, and witty set design, the conceptual art of Mädchen Vivi drives a deeper purpose into contemporary art through the embrace of the macabre, ironic portrayals of glamour, and a fierce rebellious attitude against structuralist forms.
