Sevdaliza
Sevdaliza at Northside Festival, McCarren Park, photographed by Eric Phipps.
Witness the minimalist aerobic workouts in the visuals from Piet Langeveld for Sevdaliza’s “Amandine Insensible” that takes aim at appointed gender roles through a meta-narrative that surrounds the story of the protagonist Amandine. Centered in a blank room with gallery ivory walls, the world of Amandine is portrayed like an installation-performance where reductionist ideas about occupational gender roles are played out in a pop art carousel.
Sevdaliza’s “Amandine Insensible” is seen & heard like an update to Shaka Khan & Whitney’s eternal classic “I’m Every Woman” where Sevdaliza’s Amandine avatar embodies the expanded roles of women in today’s world (while displayed against a blank white back drop). In this space we see Amandine take on the visage of an aerobics instructor, a sultry satin-clad dilettante, followed by a cyber-nu-punk chic, to a business operator (ear piece, power-suit & all). Sevdaliza challenges the norms of today’s standards of stoicism along with the challenges of establishing identity in a world where everyone is just blending in with the crowd.
The story of Amandine explores the concept of identity in a contemporary world that is rapidly changing due to the disappearance of boundaries. Amandine is everything you want her to be. An extreme extraction of average life, representing a world where we have become so universal all feelings have disappeared. Paradoxically, this makes you feel uncomfortable. Her life takes place in an infinite white space, composed with minimal objects that represent different facets of the cycle of daily life. The accessibility of information and matter has created a new universal language, in which commercial brands play a key role.
