“This is crap! You can obviously see that she is acting. She is pretending to spit on you — she almost laughs! The work has no violence! It is fake violence and it is just not interesting.”
So said Ragnar´s professor at the Iceland Academy of Arts, when the young Ragnar Kjartansson showed him Me & My Mother (2000). In this short video, the artist and his mother pose in front of the living-room bookcase, looking rather stiff, before she starts persistently spitting in his face for several long minutes. The violence of the action contrasts with the obvious complicity between the two players. The mother’s barely contained laughter and the son’s bashful demeanour produce an alienating effect; a hamming-up which was severely criticised by his teacher. “I was devastated. But when I started thinking about what he said, it was as if he had spoken some magic words. I realized it was the fact that it was acted out that made it interesting. It was the falseness of it that made it so real. Aernout Mik with his passion as a teacher opened the door to my art for me.” Every five years, the artist and his mother follow the same protocol, with its numerous metaphorical meanings; the saliva evoking in turn language, contamination or a deadly passion. The student’s project has turned into a ritual, and a family portrait bearing witness of the passing of time. Me & My Mother is thus as much a mischievous memento mori as the expression of a filial love which is lost for words.
 

Exhibitions

Ragnar Kjartansson, Scheize - Liebe - Sehnsucht. 20.07.2019-20.10.2019
Kunstmuseum Stuttgart

Literature

Ragnar Kjartansson: Me and My Mother, EX3 - Centro per l'arte contemporanea/ Mousse Publishing, Firenze, 2010

Maria Anna Potocka (forword by), The MOCAK Collection, Museum of Contemporary Art in Krakow, Krakow, 2011

Oliver Basciano, Ragnar Kjartansson, Art Review, March 2014

Palais de Tokyo, Ragnar Kjartansson, Seul celui qui connait le désir, Les Presses du Réel, Paris, 2015

New Museum, 235 Bowery New York NY 10002 USA, Ragnar Kjartansson: Me, My Mother, My Father, and I, Ragnar Kjartansson: Me, My Mother, My Father, and I, New Museum, New York, 2014

Oliver Basciano, Ragnar Kjartansson Relative Matters, ArtReview, May 2014

UBS, Art|41|Basel, Hatje Cantz Verlag, Basel, 2010

Barbican Centre, Ragnar Kjartansson, Ragnar Kjartansson, Koenig Books Ltd., London, 2016

Erlangen, Germany, Dicker als Wasser. Konzepte des Familiaeren in der zeitgenössischen Kunst, Dicker als Wasser. Konzepte des Familiaeren in der zeitgenössischen Kunst, Milena Mercer, Erlangen, 2016