Filmoteka Muzeum

The work was premiered during the exhibition Collection of Shameful Gestures. Birgit Brenner / Anna Baumgart at the Zachęta National Gallery in Warsaw. It is the first of Anna Baumgart’s staged films, marking a new direction in the artist’s video practice, which was pursued further in, among others, Fresh Cherries. Ecstatics, Hysterics and Other Saintly Ladies is a story of self-aggression, female fears of loneliness, lack of acceptance, intimate rituals carried out at home. Even though the scenes of self-aggression are staged, they refer to real-life stories. In conversation with Agata Jakubowska, Anna Baumgart said: “I’m tempted by the possibility of redefining the notion of ‘hysteria’, the transformation from an offensive epithet into a compliment. For me hysterics sounds interesting, it’s a synonym of a creative approach of women to the world, a rebellious or even revolutionary stance. Something that feminism has already discovered and analysed on the basis of the 19th century hysteria – it’s a sort of self-art – it has never been accepted in the social consciousness”.

Work in the collections of the the Zachęta National Gallery of Art in Warsaw and the Society for the Encouragement of Fine Arts in Lublin.

(DM)