Artist reflecting role models from media culture

US multimedia and performance artist Desirée Holman uses for the project 'The Magic Window' (2007) handmade masks and costumes to re-build the images of iconic families from the TV series 'Cosby Show' and 'Roseanne'. 'The Magic Window' as title references to the first ad campaign for the media 'TV' in America in 1939 where the screen was sold as 'Magic Window'.

From 26 June to 18 September 2011, the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive at the University of California exhibits in 'Desirée Holman: Heterotopias / MATRIX 238' a new work by the artist. On show are sixteen drawings of gamers in their avatar bodies and a new video work made of performance and 3-D digital animation. The exhibition connects to former works of Desirée Holman such as 'The Magic Window'.

"In Heterotopias, Holman constructs a Möbius-like relation between real and virtual, self and avatar, action and play, fantasy and fiction. Rather than casting for roles, Holman’s cast invented their own characters, whose costuming conflates archetypes popular in media and role-playing games (the games themselves conflations of myth, history, and fantasy), as an expression of each individual’s desire." bampfa.berkeley.edu/exhibition/238


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