The Female Conductor's Back

Given the perspective of orchestra, we see a mid-length portrait of a director leading a rehearsal of Hector Berlioz’s Le Corsaire. The artist is hard at work, fully concentrated, using precise gestures to literally evoke the music from off screen. This impression is reinforced by the lack of other visible sources of music: no instruments, no record player, all we can see is the top of a violin bow pressing into the lower left picture frame here and there. This detail mediates a strange bit of documentary evidence, adds context to the loneliness of this music laborer. In her intense, minimal, and formally impressive work, the artist grapples skilfully what is considered the most difficult, intellectual, authoritarian and gender-restricted part of the classical music industry.