artist statement
Lavatelli works in installation, performance, film and video to examine the portrayal of women, femininity, and expectations in cinema— how cinema has fragmented realities and perceived female identity.
She constructs installations with moving image to suspend the construct, the female star, in the very unreality of cinema. There is a strong visual reference to the history of cinema, this permits a scene to be established for the actress to enter the frame and disarm the cinematic machine from the inside. In addition to the visual and self-referential, the featuring of young actresses enables an examination of becoming woman. Even more so, their process of performing a feminine representation as their identity construction continues to be affected by the intake of specifically codified images of ideality in popular culture. This opens up the role of the actress in relation to the individual’s process of identifying as female.
Beyond feminism Lavatelli’s work engages the concept of suspension. Her process is one of gathering cinematic fragments and reconstructing pivotal moments in an effort to re-capture the “gasp.” That is this moment where the subject is inside and outside of herself simultaneously, where identity disintegrates and bodily ego fails to assert itself.
“I am searching for the moment of transition” (the cut) “where
when wearing red lipstick” (close-up) “while walking down the street
I suddenly” (freeze frame) “become an object for viewing”
(the gaze), “and is this a changeable reality?”