My Better Years

Christine Negus

Christine Negus, My Better Years, Video Stills, 2016
Digital Video | Stereo Audio |1:51 min | 1920 x 1080
<https://vimeo.com/159079241>.

With beginnings in a news story about a Florida woman living in a self-made house of horrors mixed with audio manipulated from a YouTube video of a doll, allegedly created by a serial killer, that sings “I Feel Fantastic” while zooming in on a supposed burial site of woman, My Better Years was born, somewhat like us all, out of trauma. As the narrator navigates her subject’s domestic space through a parade of blades, she ultimately pricks the subject of femme self-preservation and protection. Transubstantiating the woman’s body into that of a tiny, tender, green vegetable lovingly supported by layers of knives, the work provides an absurd misinterpretation and bastardization of the classic Princess and the Pea fable. This video culminates with the insightfully true utterance: “she would open her door and scream, ‘it’s a war out there’ before retreating back inside, …and she wasn’t wrong.” Overall, My Better Years twists the dualities inherent between comfort and danger, undercutting that a bed of knives isn’t the scariest thing out there and may make a better bedfellow than the alternative.


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