These Unruly and Ungovernable Selves (2020)

Michelle Handelmans new work THESE UNRULY AND UNGOVERNABLE SELVES 2020 recontextualizes characters from her previous works into a hypnotic visual essay about the transfiguring of interiority during periods of isolation and fear It takes as its starting point the current coronavirus pandemic and filters it through theorist Jill Casids writings on the necrocene and Walter Benjamins writings on identifying the difference between threshold and boundaries Handelmans characters who each have already struggled with existential questions of belonging and fear in her projects DORIAN A CINEMATIC PERFUME 200911 IRMA VEP THE LAST BREATH 201315 and HUSTLERS EMPIRES 2018 are juxtaposed with found images and texts sourced during the pandemic to take on a new form that both denies and struggles with containment