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Tossed, Video, Color, Sound, Runtime: 05:10
The tensions and frictions between feminine grace and hysteria animate many of Ali Prosch's video works. In Tossed she employs her signature approach of melding repetitive, gestural performance with d.i.y. video effects to draw the viewer into psychologically charged scenes. Anger, disassociation, beauty, sensuousness, physicality, and abstract aesthetics give Tossed its potency, as Prosch infuses the mundane domestic task of preparing a salad with understated affective power. The performance in the video is set in a bleach white backdrop against which the leafy greens fly, spill and scatter, creating attractive and dynamic compositions that articulate the feelings that the stoic woman in the video refuses to address. Watching the character work with such little gusto makes us feel uncomfortable, yet we enjoy looking at her. In a deep blue shirt, against a stark white background, she is graceful and sculptural like a Renaissance Madonna, with aloft gaze and beautiful face. Although she seems distant from us we can in fact connect to her situation, one we usually deal with everyday - trying to find meaning and beauty in the mundane.
-Dr. Jillian Hernandez, Curator and Professor of Gender, Sexualities, and Women’s Studies at the University of Florida