Bulletproof, Vee Speers at Fotografiska Museet, Stockholm.
From the museum's catalogue:
In the exhibition The Birthday Party, Vee Speers portrays children on their way to an imaginary birthday party. In the new series Bulletproof, the same children have become young adults. Five years later, like a futuristic army, they stand in front of the camera, armed for life, wearing clothes and props that testify to a dystopia.
The girl with the dolls has grown up to become a huntress, carrying a weapon in her hand and her prey on her shoulders. However, the warrior's armour does not look like it could withstand even a simple skirmish.
Sigmund Freud argued that when children play they create a world of their own in which everything is possible, but the game can also render and repeat actual events. In Speers' portraits, child's play becomes a spectacle of our own reality, removed from time and space. Five years after the imaginary birthday party the game has transformed into a preparation for adult life.
With the image as a canvas and using the digital retouch brush, the artist slowly chisels out a perfect and almost painterly picture, free of context and social situations. The young adults' armour tells of the world they find themselves in, and perhaps also about the world that lies ahead. Their previous childish gazes are now steady, reflecting their inalienable belief in their own immortality. We can only imagine what awaits them.
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