Nude model in 1901, engineer in the 30s, typist in 1960, tour guide in the 80s, exhibition curator, squatter, secretary, musician, sociologist, stage manager or even TV news presenter, Charlie Chine writes with exhibitions, actions and performances the story of her own history.
From elementary actions (screwing, painting, copying, pruning, harvesting…) cadenced by the music of the radio or the ticking of the clock, Charlie Chine pushes the repetition of gesture to the point of performance. Absurd, anti-productive, even completely useless, work here becomes the spectacle of our capacity to want to produce ourselves.
Products of correction, or to make the world a better place, products to prolong listening, that of the other, that of oneself, his objects are perhaps not part of the modern world, but belong to a nostalgic elsewhere where this mix pop culture and black humor.
As the repository of individual and collective memory, the individual is, for her, the variable, the unique, the comparable. She dissects the habitus of modern man through these same conditions of existence, such as his culture, his work, his education, the territory he occupies or grants himself, as well as his way of inhabiting it.
Based on the anonymity of participants, she conducts public studies to explore long-term memory, between the residual traces of active and passive consumption of mass culture and what remains of the Self (mapping autobiographical narratives, archiving memories of collective experiences, studying ritornello among generation “y”, skills assessments).
Whether through neo-paleophonic objects, studies on memory, or the performance of post-tayloric automatisms, Charlie Chine offers us an archaeological vision of modern man. She blurs the boundaries between creator and manufacturer. She positions her body – I am the artisan at the service of myself – at the heart of a practice where the very identity of the artist blends through multiple networks.
+ info: https://www.charliechine.com/