Rona Yefman, Let it bleed, 2010. Collage (detail)
PARTICIPANT INC presents the first US solo exhibition of Rona Yefman, Let it Bleed, curated by Manon Slome. Let it Bleed is a chapter from an extensive personal archive, My Brother and I (1996-2009). As early as 1996, her younger brother, Gil, was Yefman’s first model and inspiration. She began an intimate image record of their adolescence, using the camera to invent multiple novel identities in an imaginative world they constructed for themselves. This body of work became a joint archaeological journey, chronicling two siblings’ symbiotic existence as collaborative artists, and their mutual desire to live exterior to the norm. The most complex part of this project occurred between 2000-2009, during which time Yefman documented Gil’s intimate process of transformation from male to a female, and her subsequent transformation back to a biological male. Rebelling against conventional gender roles as well as familial ones, this extensive body of work is the focus of the exhibition, Let it Bleed, which combines images of formal role-play and performative acts with snapshots and mixed videotapes that expose very real emotional situations, chronicling an experience of youth through a curve of fantasies, hopes, and desires; disappointments, confusion, conflicts, and flirtation with familial taboos.
Rona Yefman, Let It Bleed. Installation view
Rona Yefman, Let It Bleed. Installation view
Rona Yefman, Let It Bleed. Installation view with Gil Yefman
A piece by Gil Yefman, Rona & I, 2010. Knitting, spinning motor
Rona Yefman, Let It Bleed. Installation view
Rona Yefman, Let It Bleed. Installation view
Rona Yefman, Let it bleed, 2010. Collage