Response to Cindy Sherman

Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam is currently closed because of a major restoration. Thus, their entire art collection is out of sight. For this reason, the museum initiated Visibly Absent, a project where they asked young artists and designers to represent an icon from their collection in the city of Amsterdam.

For the first edition of Visibly Absent, the icon that Pinar&Viola choose to represent is Untitled Film Still #54 by Cindy Sherman.

Response to Cindy Sherman reveals the presence of women, from all over the world, photographing themselves imitating Cindy Sherman's Untitled Film Stills. The imitations are found on social network sites.

The assemblage of Response to Cindy Sherman refers to analogue contact sheets and digital image search engines. The meaningful captions underneath the imitations are motivations of the amateur photographers, consisting of admirations, comments and critics. Cindy Sherman is honored and sometimes updated by her representatives.

In the Untitled Film Stills serie, Cindy Sherman is photographing herself every time in a completely different appearance, hiding her own identity. Her photographs are manipulated in the smallest details and raise questions about authenticity, imitation and identification. Fictitious identities, stereotypes and role plays are visible in Sherman's Untitled Film Stills and are important aspects in the virtual world. Response to Cindy Sherman attracts the attention of a new audiences by correlating the Untitled Film Stills (created between 1977 and 1980) with the popular world of  online social networking.

Commissioned by: Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam

Art icon from SMA's collection:
Untitled Film Still #54 by Cindy Sherman

Imitation found on a social network site:
Untitled Film Still #54 imitation
by Lil_LoLa found on MySpace

Art icon from SMA's collection:
Untitled Film Still #13 by Cindy Sherman

Imitation found on a social network site:
Untitled Film Still #13 imitation
by Þórdís Reynisdóttir found on Flickr

Art icon from SMA's collection:
Untitled Film Still #34 by Cindy Sherman

Imitation found on a social network site:
Untitled Film Still #34 imitation
by LorrAAAine found on Flickr

The central station of Amsterdam, February - May 2009

Please visit Stedelijk Museum website for more information about this project.