In contrast with the optimistic natural-ness of Boursier-Mougenot’s live installation at the Curve Gallery, Alice Anderson’s Time Reversal at Riflemaker recounts much more sinister tale of family angst, psychological suppression and unnatural-ness of desire. If you are not sure where the gallery is, we’d say, look for the visually imposing locks of doll’s hair hanging out of the first-floor window. The hair goes back inside the building, and like undaunted cobwebs, freezes itself in the air, on the ceiling and floor. Here, time itself has stopped, and the mystery is awaits an unfolding.

The partial revelation comes in form of a 9-minute film “The Night I Became a Doll,” which is a sequel to Anderson’s former work “The Doll’s Day” (2008) and complements the intellectual, conceptual framework of her gargantuan installation Time Reversal. Here the pseudo-autobiography of the artist is made explicit, a story of a child hated by her psychotic mother. To please her mother, the girl stops eating, moving, speaking. Very slowly, she turns into a doll, ironically only to be cast away by her mother. This fractured family life is a fictitious parallel of Anderson’s childhood during which her parents separated; herself emigrated to France with her mother and was forbidden to speak about her father again.

Following Anderson’s former work, the father doll fades into the background in “The Night I Became a Doll”. The unfolding of Anderson’s childhood trauma through her works is far from straightforward. It is, rather, psychological and relational. The factual relevance and verisimilitude is displaced by the emotive restraints, the frozen frustration of time, and the psychological discomfort. But, whichever you are in for, please do not attempt to climb the hair or feed the finches!

Words: Poonperm Paitayawat
Photography: Lyndon Doug for Céleste Boursier-Mougenot, Courtesy of The Curve, Barbican Art Gallery; Alice Anderson’s Time Reversal, Courtesy of Alice Anderson and Riflemaker