Cabellocarceller

After studying fine arts and art theory at various universities in Spain and Scotland, Helena Cabello and Ana Carceller, hereforth Cabello/Carceller, moved to California to study and teach at the Department of New Genres of the San Francisco Art Institute. The result of this education and exposure was transformative for their artistic approach.

For the past ten years Cabello/Carceller have produced a series of ground-breaking photographs and videos that investigated clichés of gender roles and the construction of masculine and feminine identities in film and society. In their films and still photography they have examined how settings determine social roles by encouraging and enforcing various kinds of human interaction between the genders. Such locations as factories, swimming pools, bars, discotheques, and cinemas are all sites were boys and girls and men and women learn to interact with each other and to create the social roles of their own gender as much as of the opposite. Informed by gender studies and feminist theory, Cabello/Carceller’s work can be seen as an analytical coming-out party of a society in transition from the traditional to one infinitely more open to self-identification and freedom of choice.

Works such as Sin título Utopia (Untitled Utopia, 1998), Alguna Parte (Some Part, 2002), and The End (2004) all examine these social settings and how they codify human behavior. Other videos including Un Beso (A Kiss, 1996) and Identity Game (1996) look more directly at how individual and gender identities are formed in society. Both videos partake of multiple self-portraits and the ambiguity of gender identification. It is often impossible to make out masculine of feminine identities. They write, “In societies openly hostile towards anything they cannot pigeonhole as being ‘correct,’ the construction of a real or mental place where one can live with an acceptable level of freedom becomes an indispensable goal. Each of us builds our own personal Utopia wherever we are able.” This struggle to create that space becomes, in the end effect, a personal journey of self-realization, and this trial-and-error method of navigating life’s choices and opportunities is the subject of two more videos, Return Ticket (2000) and Utopia Ida y Vuelta (Utopia Round Trip, 2002).

A later work, Casting: James Dean, Rebelde sin Causa (Auditioning: James Dean, Rebel without a Cause, 2004), became a major point of departure for Cabello/Carceller’s later focus on gender identities and social role playing. In this video, sixteen women, selected by an open casting call, enact the role played by James Dean in one of his most stylized—and wildly imitated— moments of “performing masculinity” in cinema, the famous police-station scene from the 1955 Nicholas Ray movie where Dean asserts his identity as a newly fledged young man in front of his parents and the police. They describe their project as follows, “A part of our work is related to contradictory aspects in the construction of masculinity and with it a deconstruction of Hollywood models of beauty that have seduced so many societies. Our project appropriates stereotypes that intervene in the construction of that global masculinity, focusing on examples coming from cinema, which we consider as one of the most important ‛schools of behavior’ in our culture.” Casting: James Dean sets the stage for the most important work Cabello/Carceller have produced to date, the Ejercicios de Poder (Exercises of Power, 2005/6).

Set in an abandoned factory, the Tabacalera in San Sebastián, Cabello/Carceller stage scenes from two Hollywood classics where specific actors play gender-defining roles, Liam Neeson in Schindler’s List and Fred MacMurray with Jack Lemmon in The Apartment. The abandoned factory was a location where woman filled most of the manufacturing roles producing tobacco products. The “cigarette girls,” however had little or no power in the factory where men made all the important decisions. The offices and hallways of the factory remain as they were when they were abandoned. The roles played by Neeson, MacMurray, and Lemmon are performed by two amateur actresses playing “masculinized women” as Pia Ogea describes them in an article. The lighting and staging is reminiscent of classic film noir with its long shadows and empty spaces building tension. Ogea notes that “the characters and scenery of Ejercicios de poder reflect out-dated social behavior, hierarchical power structures, and work systems, but ones which are often still prevalent.” The video of 8’15” is accompanied by four large images. “These images, like the video,” Ogea continues, “reflect the cinematic style and photography of the late forties and early fifties. The ambivalence of character and space encourage the spectator to consider the possibility that changes have taken, and are taking, place in the models of behavioral codes as depicted by the central characters of the video, as well as in the system which gives rise to this type of power exercises.”
Cabello/Carceller completed their trilogy of Ejercicios de Poder with After Apocalypse Now: Martin Sheen (The Soldier) where a Philippina woman plays Sheen’s anti-hero. This take deconstructs many boundaries—among others male/female and colonial/post-colonial (Apocalypse Now was filmed in the Philippines).

As with all of their work, Cabello/Carceller use video and photography to question “the hegemonic means of representation” and “[suggest] alternatives to them.” For them, “[This] research is the consequence of a personal experience in a conservative social and artistic context which tried to label us and simplify our work, a common practice when it comes to artists who openly address queer contents or who acknowledge an influence from feminist theories in their work. These are some of the reasons why we decided to engage in ambiguous practices which would try to escape easy definitions without avoiding conflict.” Cabello/Carceller are pioneers in Spain on a journey also undertaken by the likes of Pedro Almodóvar. It is a journey of personal development and exploration and the creation of new forms of identity. It is a journey without end.