Exhibited at The Place, London

and Hafnarfardur Theatre, Iceland

 

Created by Andreas Constantinou

 

Performers

Andreas Constantinou

Alice Tatger

Isolation of the sexes

2006

Isolation of the sexes is a double screen video installation that explores isolation of the masculine and feminine. The installation comprises of two individual screens in which a man sits in one and a woman sits in the other both with their backs facing towards the spectators. Here they part-take in very minimal authentic movements that are associated with the social roles of masculinity and femininity.

 

The man flexes his muscular back and contorts into various tense tableaux’s as the woman sensually lets down her hair and plays with it on her back before slowly gathering them up once again.  An entwining relationship is established through the hypnotic rhythms of their backs, mesmerising the viewer into a trance like state through their slow sustaining movements, each working separately but together to draw a tension inwards to their indirect relationship.

 

Through viewing both the man and woman in such intimate states on separate screens a communication begins to merge between the play of their body efforts, sharing what seems to be something invisible to the eye but rather a feeling and a tension revealing the distance and closeness of the male and the female. The work displays eroticism, sensuality and the struggles that lay between the sexes.