This performance is an homage to young Helene Schjerfbeck and to her painting ‘Two Female Profiles’, painted in 1881.
When the performance starts, on the wall of the gallery space (where the audience is also located) a picture is projected – a fake cup cake (actually a kitchen clock). The fake tart, the other props and myself are in a storage room behind the audience. The performance is done to a camera that is broadcasting live via a projector to the gallery space. The camera is shooting a mirror that is lying on the floor.
I step on the mirror and start to read a text which is about Finnish (female) painter Helene Shjerfbeck’s role, as an assistant for (male) painter Albert Edelfelt, in Edelfelt’s well-known portrait of Louis Pasteur.
After the text is finished, I switch on the fake cake/kitchen clock. Whilst it is clicking I go and lie on the mirror so that my face creates a double silhouette portrait. I lie there until the alarm goes off. I write on the mirror with lipstick “e-m 10”. The performance is over.