2010-07-02T19:19:00.001-07:00

Video Still: When We Are Dying, Inez de Vega, 2010

Inez de Vega is a visual artist based in Melbourne, Australia.

"It's hard not to be preoccupied with neuroses: mine, yours, whoever's. I don't know about you, but most of the time I feel quite nuts. I want you to tell me that I'm okay; but even when you do, that can be problematic too. Because then I'll probably doubt you, and will be itching to ask if you're sure. And even if you are sure, I'll need you to reassure me again and again and again. Ooooh one can drown in the insatiability of it all..." Inez de Vega

Employing melodrama in video and live performance, de Vega utilises herself as both subject and art object to explore the psychology behind human suffering - much of which is generated in the mind.

In recent video works, de Vega employs her film-colonisation technique, generating her own narrative by interacting with characters from old movies (Gilda, Pierrot le Fou, In a Year of 13 Moons).

Other works range from interviewing passers-by on the street to determine if the artist is too fat; to enacting a drama of a telemarketer selling pills that enable consumers to love themselves; to lying in a pool of vomit, accompanied by a soundtrack that suggests dishearteningly that she is "only doing it for attention".

The individuals de Vega creates are driven to extremes: their reactions may not be healthy, or even 'acceptable', but are the best they know how to do at the time. More often than not they transgress social norms. de Vega is motivated to articulate the neuroses we generally do our best to hide from one another.

Whether our mental suffering is the result of a diagnosable psychiatric illness or the anxiety of the so-called 'worried well', we each find a way of navigating the pain that issues from these maladaptive psychological states. Essentially, de Vega is interested in how we define and negotiate our own madness.

LINKS:

Interview by Craig Burgess, curator of Is It Straight?, August 2011

Victoria Duckett's review of 'Interior Architecture', Un Magazine, Issue 5.2, pp.51-52

Thank Godard for the Show Mother cos Madness Just Kissed Art's Cunt, 2011

in cunt rehab

Media review

www.visualarts.net.au/gallery/inezdevega

http://www.westspace.org.au/program/the-feminist-salon-residency-at-the-west-wing-the-envelope.html

EMAIL:

izzie.de.cat@gmail.com

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1tXhf0bt-I0v7YCWThrBCTG8B2Zz0G089uBdW-oUX3Rs/edit