A Woman either loves or hates; there is no third grade. And the tears of woman area a deception, for they may spring from true grief, or they may be a snare. When a woman thinks alone, she thinks evil. -Seneca, Tragedies (as quoted in the Malleus Maleficarum)

MARVELLI GALLERY is pleased to present Unbreak My Heart, a new video projection by Alex McQuilkin. McQuilkin’s new video reinvestigates themes from previous works: loss, objectification, abandonment and desire. These raw emotions, easily grasped by anyone who has experienced longing, are circumvented through acts of play: A strip tease laden with sorrow, an execution accompanied by a pop love song.

In the opening scene, a wallpapered wall shifts in and out of focus. In the following shot a lifeless girl’s gaze, viewed through the cinematic cue of the shot/reverse shot, focuses on that wall. She is still, except for the twirling ballerina reflected in her eye. The shot pulls out to reveal that the music box is positioned behind the subject. The confusion amongst these shots creates a disjointed representation of reality distorting both cinematic tropes and spatial relations. Internal and external realities blur and disorient the viewer’s point of reference. Disorientation in terms of artificial, hysterical perception but also of unadulterated magic. Magic in this sense is creating a deliberately modified reality. Is this a hysterical hallucination or a calculated enchantment?

Secluded in this seemingly unfixed space, the character is the only witness to her growing melancholia and attempted seduction. Wallpaper becomes a reference point for hysteria, taken from iconic scenes from film and literature. Such as the scene from Ingmar Bergman’s “Through a Glass Darkly” in which Karin faints after hearing voices behind peeling wallpaper. In McQuilkin’s piece, the wallpaper is intact, un-torn and seemingly endless, suggesting an inescapable prison from this mental state. Her confinement to this wallpaper adorned room at the hands of an unknown oppressor is also a reference to Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper.” This puts in to question the 19th century notions of female hysteria, modes of belief still prevalent but that the artist negates:

“This video is an exorcism. It is an expulsion of ideas that haunt- ideas that have been in place for hundreds of years and which can be examined clearly because I am able to locate them under my own skin. – It is a fine and treacherous line to engage with the embedded ideas and power structures that define our world and where we are situated within it. An embedded social structure infiltrates so deeply and cunningly that it inflicts even those who it most threatens. Unknowingly we subscribe to the very notions that subordinate.”

The allegory of the hysteric is interlaced with allusions to the witch. Lines from Malleus Maleficarum are read aloud by a little girl, who couldn’t possibly be aware of their implications. She is the voice of the past, representing a time of innocence. A time before this child could know the role she would be forced to play. Like Salomé being forced to seduce Herod with a dance, this lifeless girl gets up entranced and begins to perform her role as seductress. Again McQuilkin’s work is tackling antiquated ideas of hysteria and witchcraft and bringing them into a contemporary context, reinventing their narrative in order to illuminate the grasp they continue to hold over women today. With a dance performed to Toni Braxton’s “Unbreak My Heart” McQuilkin is framing the work within contemporary pop culture. The soundtrack, used to heighten emotional effect and presumably sung to a lover, functions as a futile plea for changing the past, or a contractual incantation, a spell cast. -Sörine Anderson, 2011