Bird
Performance video, 1999
Duration, 2 minutes
Bird
Performance video, 1999
Duration, 2 minutes
Videotape, black and white, silent.
Performed, shot, edited and conceptualized by Sonia Khurana.
Sonia Khurana in her performance video Bird , the first of a series of short films, reveals disturbing moving images of the herself , shot with an unstable, hand-held camera while moving in rapid, fluid movements. Shot partly in long shots Bird reveals the artist's own naked and overweight body furiously flapping around the studio, attempting to somehow rise above her obstinate, gravity-bound body. In trying to address the inarticulateness of the body the artist engages in a comic, tragic encounter with the body as a failed flight; investigating two kinds of limitations: the body confronting its own flesh, and the forces of gravity. The work questions the current forces imposed by society, conventions and dealing with the female stereotype of the body, which the artist attempts to resist.
Sonia Khurana, born in 1968, studied at the Delhi College of Art and the Royal College of Art, London. She has done a residency at Rijksakademie, Amsterdam. Her solo exhibition with video-work and installations, Lone Women Don't Lie, was shown in Delhi and Calcutta in 2000-01. Her group shows include, in 2003: the tree from the seed (Henie Onstad Kunstsenter, Oslo); in 2002: Kapital & Karma (Kunsthalle, Vienna); Private Mythologies (Apeejay Media Gallery, Delhi); Camouflage (Nehru Centre, London); South African Women's Art Festival (The Playhouse, Durban). Recent video screenings include Amsterdam International Short Film Festival (Cinema de Balie); Maastricht Outdoor Film Festival (Hedah); Digital Orgy: International video art (Bangkok); Self (Institute for Modern Art, Brisbane). The artist lives and works in Delhi.