Chantal Akerman – In the Mirror, 1971

From the first films she shot in 1968 to her last installations in 2015, filmmaker, writer, actress and artist Chantal Akerman developed a body of work that lies at the intersection of fiction, documentary, experimental film and the film essay. By constantly reinventing her formal vocabulary, her multi-faceted work transcends traditional narrative norms. Her highly individual approach to questions of borders, migration, identity and the relationship between personal and public space draws on all the potential of image, time, space and performance.

The video installation In the Mirror is based on a scene from Chantal Akerman’s 1971 short film L’enfant aimé ou je joue à être une femme mariée (“The Beloved Child, or I Play at Being a Married Woman”). An almost-naked young woman looks at herself in a mirror and makes comments about her body, criticizing for example the length of her arms or the size of her head. Through the young woman’s words, the work explores the questions of people’s relationship with themselves and of how others see them, at the same time revealing the norms of gender and beauty that govern the perception of one’s physical appearance. The stark simplicity of the black-and-white projection brings the audience face to face with their own image through an interplay of reflections between the mirror and the screen.