Event overview
The Women’s Art Library's opening event for The Sleeper Wakes begins with a performative reading of Last Portrait, a photographic artist book by Sonia Lenzi.
Lenzi uses photography to break down temporal barriers between generational memory to initiate spontaneous and moving experiences of identification with strangers. Her 2015 project It could have been me https://www.sonialenzi.com/work/it-could-have-been-me/ engaged 85 participants to represent each individual who lost to the Bologna railway station bombing of August 1980. Lenzi describes her current ongoing project, Take me to live with you, as a social family album documenting individuals she identifies with critical shifts in Italy’s post WWII-1990s cultural life and includes the feminist artist Suzanne Santoro also represented in the Women’s Art Library collection.
Audience and participants are invited to join Lenzi in Special Collections at Goldsmiths on Friday 18 October to create a collective reading of Last Portrait, recently donated to the Women’s Art Library.
‘Last Portrait’ is a fictional text arising from images of women’s photographs found in five Italian cemeteries. It is a sparse text written to evoke the woman (as a fiction it is assumed she is a woman) who chose the photographic portrait that will represent her sister/mother/daughter/aunt/grandmother/etc forever through her imagnined inner thoughts. Up to 25 women can participate by creating a response to a selected photograph as one of the women choosing the Last Portrait.
The aim is to make us reflect on our relationships and identities, on how we want to be represented and by whom, and to enforce our inner bonds, our genealogies, as women. Every participant can find the list of the characters and relationships in the book available to view in Special Collections and the website http://www.sonialenzi.com/work/last-portrait/
When a portrait is chosen email a.greenan@gold.ac.uk for further details.
The event will be followed by a drinks reception for The Sleeper Wakes: photographic work by Anya Teixeira, in Special Collections.
Sonia Lenzi's Last Portrait web site
Dates & times
| Date | Time | Add to calendar |
|---|---|---|
| 18 Oct 2019 | 4:30pm - 6:00pm |
Accessibility
If you are attending an event and need the College to help with any mobility requirements you may have, please contact the event organiser in advance to ensure we can accommodate your needs.
