Playing With Myself

In *Playing with Myself*, Claudia Clemente revisits and recreates scenarios reminiscent of the collective imagination, using everything from stereotypes and social conventions to cinematic characters and historical or traditional figures, with the aim of exploring how these staged images, already rooted in the imagistic universe of society, intervene in the inner worlds of the individuals who compose it. To this end, the artist portrays and reinvents herself in the guise of these characters, causing a certain tension and discomfort in the viewers who see them, through the use of absurdity and satirical, and sometimes dark, humor.

“Only by living absurdly can one ever break through this infinite absurdity.”

(from Rayuela, Julio Cortázar)

“I understand humor as the last bastion of possible resistance, and satire as a way to survive an increasingly absurd, hostile, and unintelligible world.

This series, begun in 2010, consists of a set of seemingly simple stagings using a multiplicity of characters: from classic films (“The Books” quoting Hitchcock’s “The Birds,” “Supermom” applying her superpowers to the demands of daily life, “007” with a gun and dry martini in hand) to illustrious national historical figures (“They are roses, sir!”), revisiting icons of traditional Portuguese culture (the fishwife, the Barcelos rooster) and passing through many other paradigms or elements of the collective imagination – the phoenix, the mermaid, the perfect housewife – in which I see myself or reinvent myself. Contrasting with this apparent simplicity in the stagings, there is a deliberate artificiality in the poses and in the…” The lighting reminds us that there is nothing natural about these shadow-beings, these reflective creatures. The absurdity portrayed in these characters aims to create tension, to cause a certain unease, to produce that nervous laughter that drags the observer along and takes them out of their comfort zone. Let us therefore delve into the winding territory of introspection, of dreams, of darkness – the dangerous world within ourselves.