Barbara Hlali [Videonale.10, under former name of Barbara Schmidt]

Barbara Hlali [Barbara Schmidt] x

My faith, 2005, 4:54 min, sound, Black and White [VIDEONALE.10]

My faith is a poetical tribute to the belief in the triumph of reconciliation and harmony. In this animated film made from drawings, the artist narrates the archetypal history of relationship, separation and love in an imaginative manner. The description of the suffering and reunion of a couple enters into a dense dialogue with the visualization of the protagonists´ inner emotional states. Outer event and inner emotion become visually interwoven, influencing each other in their pictorial rendition. In addition to these narrative levels, the artist uses two overlapping means of representation. Now and again, the filmed hands of the artist in her role as hidden wire-puller reach into the animation and thereby into the happenings; they mend rifts and allow the protagonists to overcome abysses. Thus the title My faith also becomes readable as a credo concerning the power of artistic creation and the attainment of an ideal world being possible through art. In a free interpretation of Plato´s concept of the spherical human being such as expressed by the young Aristophanes in the Symposium, Schmidt portrays the two wrenched-apart protagonists as maimed beings which have need of each other in order to be complete.

Dorothée Brill