Natalia LL
Since the 1960s, the photo and video works of Natalia LL have revolved around the role of the body as a cultural signifier for the construction of artistic versions of reality relating both to the vulnerability of physical representation and to the desire to create bodily narrations in mythical situations. Being married to photo artist Andrzej Lachowicz, Natalia LL has since the 1970s used the first letters of her officially registered last name, Lach-Lachowicz, to create a trademark as well as an artistic persona for all her visual appearances. This artistic strategy is in keeping with the increasing
commoditization of products that has taken place since the 1960s, as well as with the theories of writers such Marshall McLuhan, who saw the onslaught of product placement in the media as a precursor of Western image ideologies. On an artistic level, however, this trope is not meant merely to turn the artist into a product; it much rather relates to Marxist theories. For Marx, commoditization is assigned to something not previously considered in economic terms which, in this case, relates to artistic thoughts, identity formations and representations of gender. Natalia LL’s strategic positioning puts her in line with fellow artists such as VALIE EXPORT, who drastically altered her real name for the sake of artistic representation in order to engage in performance and create media art focusing on the subjectivization of the female body within a male-dominated society. From the very beginning of her artistic career, Natalia LL used her own self in combination with various props and prostheses in order to relate to the changing parameters in terms of which issues of the body and the body’s representation as a mythical and sexual object/subject are treated in contemporary visual practices. Focusing on the media of photography and film, Natalia LL’s work questions the ontological aspects of bodily representation, which visual output oscillates constantly between reality and fiction, between what is culturally significant, concealed or unmasked. W.S.
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