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HIDE

A Demons Desire
BY
Annee Olofsson

In 1976, the German heavy metal group, Scorpions, released their record ”Virgin Killer”. On the cover a 12-year old girl poses naked. The cover caused such strong reactions that it was exchanged for another in several countries. The image resurfaced in 2008 when the British Internet Watch Foundation blacklisted it – and for several days even blocked Wikipedia where the cover photo was available. This in turn provoked an intensive debate about censure and freedom of expression.

This record cover has been with Anneé Olofsson ever since she saw it in a record shop several years ago. She admits that “for some reason I am still caught by that picture and I have thought a lot about what it actually is in it that is so provocative. I got the urge to get inside that cover, to go back in time and find out more about the girl and about the day the photo was taken.” Anneé Olofsson found and contacted the photographer, Michael von Gimbut, who took the original picture. The young girl was promised that her identity would never be revealed, but it was speculated that her name might be Jacqueline. When looking at the original photograph of the girl(that Annee borrowed from the photographer Michel Von Gimbut for a solo show in Stockholm in 2011) where she is removed from the covers original context and separated from the record cover, the image acquires a new meaning and prompts new questions.

In the video, A Demon’s Desire (2011) Anneé Olofsson has made a sort of reconstruction of her fantasies about how the photograph might have been done. Behind the camera we see Michael von Gimbut, assisted by his wife Parvin, just as in 1976. Michael von Gimbut was the only man present at the session: in addition to the girl’s mother and sister, the PR people, stylists and representatives of the record company were all women.Anneé Olofsson is interested in how we decode images and how the gaze changes over time. She delves through different layers of meaning, dissects and investigates, trying to find new questions and answers.

Aspect ratio 1.78:1 (16:9)
Prod. format Generic HD-video
Duration 00:12:00
Language English
Color Color
Year 2011
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About the artist

Annee Olofsson

Anneé Olofsson mainly works with video, photography but also sculpture and installation. Throughout her career as an artist, she has worked consistently with topics that deal with complicated family relationship and power conditions. It is about growing up, about loneliness, about fear of getting old and about how distance and alienation comes with all human relationships. At the same time, she explores her own personal fears and trauma and allow different interpretations depending on the viewer’s own history and experience. Anneé uses her own life as an artistic tool for analyzing how we relate to the outside world, she believes that the worldly originates in the familiar in her art which explores and highlights the relationships. Very much research is behind each individual project and Anneé’s working method is slow and time consuming. Her videos and photos are usually based on a performative situation.

Anneé is included in Moderna Museet’s collection and MoMA in New York and at other major institutions around the world like SeMA (Seoul Museum of Art), Korea, Orlando Museum of Art Orlando, Hirschorn Museum Smithsonian Institute and Corcoran Gallery of Art Washington DC , Mint Museum of Art North Carolina, Herbert F. Johnsom Museum of Art Ithaca, The Henry Art Gallery Seattle MFL and several private collections in the US, Asia, Europe and Scandinavia.

Between 2018 – 2020, Anneé have exhibited at Bangkok Art Biennale, The Phillips Collection in Washington DC, Katzen Museum of Art, Washington DC, The Scandinavia House, New York, and SeMA (Seoul Museum of Art). In 2021 she made a separate exhibition at Höganäs Museum and Konsthall.

In recent years, Anneé also works with public art and her latest public works from 2020 are available at St Erik’s new eye hospital in Stockholm.

In Januari 2022, a larger monograph comes out about her artistry “This is Annee Olofsson” (about 300 pages) with the newly started swedish book publisher Praun & Guermouche (Design Sandra Praun).

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