Myriam Thyes
Project date: August 2009
submitted 2009-10-23 18:51:45
Call: Open Anti-Bodies
Description: The animation GLOBAL VULVA connects female figures and vulva symbols from different times, countries and cultures, while they morph into each other: Paleolithic engravings, the Greek goddess Baubo, a winged woman from an ice-age culture in Siberia, an Irish Sheila-na-gig, an Indian yoni stone, the Tibetan goddess Naljorma Dewa, African statues of noble ancestors, the Aztec goddess Mayahuel, the Black Stone at the Kaaba in Mecca, a double-tailed mermaid, ...
Format: Flash / digital video (HD)
Genre: visual art, animation
URL: http://www.thyes.com/relations-polarities/global-vulva/index.html
Artist Bio:
Myriam Thyes is a new media artist from Switzerland, living in Germany (studied at Academy of Fine Arts, Dusseldorf). She has participated in international exhibitions and festivals since 1994. She has realised events of video art in public space.
Best known artwork: participatory project www.flag-metamorphoses.net
Fundings received (1996 – 2008) by: City of Dusseldorf, Swiss Federal Office of Culture, Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia. Artist in Residence: Cité des Arts, Paris (1990), and Glasgow (2008). Awards: Depict! Award 2005, Encounters Festival, Bristol, UK. MultiMediaPrize 2006, Avanca Festival, Portugal.
Thyes' themes deal with symbols, myths and visual signs from architecture, politics, movies, or religions. Her artworks are explorations of their meanings, a questioning, reassessments, and creations of new associations. In order to undermine entrenched representations, the artist works directly with them, to develop them further and juxtapose them against new representations. Thyes' works are conceptual and sensual at the same time, using animation, abstraction, and found footage to present critical views of political, social and religious systems. Symbols and mythic figures undergo transformations, start to communicate and build new relations. Symbols of identities become elements for dialogues.