Mirror
Nicole Lalonde
Lethbridge,
2011 Video 2:33
In
my mother’s room there was a tiny niche between the shelf and the wall. Due to
the presence of a heat register, my sister and I found it to be a cozy place to
sit. Grasping the hem of our nightgowns, we would tuck them up under our feet,
and as the heat pushed frantically against the fabric, we giggled at our
seemingly inflated bodies. Unfortunately, there was only room enough for one;
thus, for the first time Melissa and I had discovered a space that we could not
occupy simultaneously.
This
video depicts two superimposed images of my twin and me. Like magnets of the
same charge, our features resist each other—flickering between identities—unil
one image gradually dominates the other. Meanwhile, we synchronously describe a
traumatic event that occurred in our youth. Although this event could only have
happened to one of us, we both remember being the one in danger. Once again, we
are attempting but failing to occupy the same space. As a result, it becomes
apparent that as identities emerge and develop, they are both dependent upon
and autonomous from those around us.
Nicole
Lalonde is a video artist from Lethbridge. She and her twin sister were born in
Hinton and raised in Edson. She earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts at the
University of Lethbridge in 2012 and is anticipating the beginning of a
professional art career. Her work has been exhibited at the U of L annual
curated student exhibition, the student art show at the Penny Building and the
sixth annual University of Lethbridge Film Festival. During the latter, she was
awarded the best experimental film. She is also one of the recipients of the
Roloff Beny Award (2012), the Jason Lang Scholarship (2009, 2010) and the Mary
Annis Award (2010). Two of her works have also been purchased by the Department
of Art at the Univesrity of Lethbridge.
