Norwegian-Singaporean artist and printmaker, Cathrine Alice Liberg, practices printmaking techniques ranging from stone lithography to photogravure and monotype from her base in Oslo.
In the photogravure suite Imaginary Photographs of my Great-Grandmother, Cathrine staged portraits of her Chinese great-grandmother, of whom her family have no photographs or records of. “All I know is that she was a concubine, and died in poverty at a very young age” explains the printmaker. By constructing an old Chinese photo studio and dressing up as her, Cathrine aimed to capture her throughout the various stages of her life. She relied on fantasy, as well as historical research, in order to envision a past referring to both early Chinese studio photography, and stereotypical portrayals of concubines from Chinese popular culture.
The portraits were originally captured using a digital camera, however Cathrine then printed them by hand using photogravure, a photomechanical method dating back to the 1830s. In this time-consuming chemical process, an image is etched into a copper plate which can then be inked and run through an intaglio press. By rendering her images through this analogue technique, she intended to impart them with an impression of age and nostalgia. “The photogravure process also seemed to “slow” down the images, making them no longer simply remnants of instant exposure to light” describes Cathrine. The delicate traces of wiped ink, and the embossed effect left on the paper provide a new haptic form of visuality, in which the viewers eyes almost feel the plate slowly running through the press. “The portraits became less situated in a specific moment in time, and through this operation, I could almost convince myself that they were genuinely historical” she concludes.
www.cathrineliberg.com
@cathrine.alice.liberg
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