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Vera Frenkel

This is your Messiah Speaking, 1990

Film, double channel version
9:10 min.; 15 min.

Courtesy the artist, distribution Vtape, Toronto

The works of Vera Frenkel (*1938 Bratislava, lives in Toronto) use a mix of visual and conceptual energy, narrative force, striking humor, and technical expertise to challenge the accepted notions concerning and the borders of the media she selects. She initially concentrated on prints drawings, collages, and written texts, and in the late 1970s she worked in video art, while in the 1990s she experimented with video installations and net art. In all of these phases, Frenkel refers to themes of migration, cultural memory, language, and bureaucracy.

Frenkel’s work This Is Your Messiah Speaking dates from 1990 and is more current than ever. The themes of materialism, capitalism, and consumerism fit into the current state of life and inspire a rethinking. Commissioned by Artangel Trust”, a London-based organization that facilitates extraordinary ideas in the field of art, the work was first shown on the Spactacolor Board at Piccadilly Circus, in the center of the most expensive shopping district in London.

In several interlinked narrative threads, including one in American sign language, this work takes a poetical and ironic look at the relationship between consumerism, romanticism, and cult practices. We hear an off-camera voice that claims to be the messiah and urges people to buy, while at the same time assuring people that they need not worry about doing anything that is against their own will. With her critique of society’s increasing obsession with the pleasures of consumption Frenkel helps us to understand that we need to rethink our own attitudes.

Vera Frenkel

*1938 Bratislava, lives in Toronto

Preview image: early version of Frenkel’s special two-channel installation This is Your Messiah Speaking, currently on view in the Domestic Drama exhibition. Watch this space for a short biography soon.