Catalogue > Un extrait vidéo au hasard

This video was created in response to Joanne Wardrop’s curatorial project “Matrimonial rituals, gender studies and false facial hair”, an imaginative attempt to understand rituals, objects and customs found in the Pitt Rivers Museum’s Collection. In the video the artist re enacts a song from the Bollywood director Mehboob Khan’s movie “Anmol Gahri” released in 1946, just before India gained freedom from British rule in 1947. The film was a musical hit and is still remembered for its music by Naushaad and became the highest grossing film at the Indian Box Office in 1946. By re enacting the song the artist questions the status of women in 21st Century Indian patriarchal society, when India is on the brink of becoming one of the world economic powerhouses in the coming years. Although the translation of the song reads primarily as a sad romantic song but its connotations of a woman surrendering to a male dominated society can not be sidelined, especially as she is conditioned to take a man as the savior of her destiny and strongly believes in her annihilation without his protection. The superimposed artificial paper beard adds to this conundrum of identity. The project of which this video is a part was inspired by an artificial beard collected by Antoinette and Diana Powell-Cotton in Angola in the 1930s that is currently on display in the University of Oxford`s Pitt Rivers Museum. Such beards were worn by young Kwanyama girls as part of their marriage ceremonies, which the Powell-Cotton sisters filmed in the early 20th century.

Sabrina Osborne lives and works in London & New Delhi. She has her MA from Goldsmith London University. She has produced an extensive body of work – combining photography, installation and video. In her work she deals with the subjects of displacement, loss and identity. The theme underlying the work is trauma and how this is experienced through melancholia, solitude and alienation. Her projects have been exhibited widely including London Tate Britain, National Gallery Bangkok, Museum of Contemporary Art : Sofia, Belgrade Art Fair, Mine Gallery Istanbul, Espacio Enter: Tenerife Spain, Tenderfelix -Tenderpixle Gallery: London, Galerie Muller and Plate: Munich, Id Art Fest: International Dynamic Contemporary Art Museum : Macerata Italy, OED Gallery: Cochin India and Pitt Rivers Museum Oxford. In 2012, her video was short listed for Celeste Prize and at Culture Cloud at New Art Exchange Nottingham.