The Tate Modern

Another short, grainy film from the Quay Brothers. This one has funny singing in it.

Hands (For the Eye, the Hand of My Body Draws My Portrait) 1977 is a black and white silent film lasting 7 minutes and 30 seconds. The work exists in an edition of 5, of which this copy is number 2, and 2 artist’s proofs. It was originally shot on 8mm film and transferred to DVD more recently. The camera was operated by fellow Romanian artist Ion Grigorescu (born 1945), with whom Bratescu frequently collaborated. In the film the artist’s hands, filmed from her eye level, are performing various movements and activities above her drawing board. The sequence starts with her playing with different objects on the desk, holding a cigarette, removing a wedding ring. The artist subsequently switches to drawing lines on her palms with a black marker and finally tracing the contours of both her hands on a piece of paper.

Print of Sleep 2016 is a is a single-channel video with sound of a durational performance by Naufus Ramírez-Figueroa. Edited down to a little under eighteen minutes for the video, the performance was originally presented at the sixth edition of the biennial event If I Can’t Dance I Don’t Want To Be Part of Your Revolution, Amsterdam in 2016 and again at KunstWerke in Berlin, where this video was filmed. It depicts a predominantly empty white room with a number of bare metal-framed beds with wire-mesh supports, some double-tiered, and lit underneath by fluorescent tubes that are placed across the space.