Monica Ross presented this installation and performance in 1984 at the Living Room gallery in a studio building in Birmingham. It dealt with violence against women and femicide. The acetates here were hung from the ceiling with red string as part of this installation. There are references to the 1983 murder and beheading of Monika Telling by her husband, as well as the sensational media coverage of it (»Headless Corpse Trial«). Ross is very critical of the use of photographs of people who have been victims of violence, environmental degradation and disasters. In the flood of media information, they seem to her to have a dulling effect, promoting voyeurism rather than sympathy and commiseration. The slides contain further references to symbolic violence in the form of mutilated, beheaded and silenced women in art, literature and history. Four photographs show how the artist performed for the camera in her installation. She not only formulates questions about how we view certain abuses, but also about the inability or even refusal to recognize them.
Living Room, Bridge Studios, Fleet Street,
Birmingham, England, 1984
