American Girl

American Girl by Ada Karczmarczyk is a series of video images in which the division between fiction and reality has been blurred. The work is very much in the convention adopted by the artist – where made up stories suddenly turn into reality and where the different episodes seem just as credible as they are impossible.

In American Girl Karczmarczyk focuses on herself, drawing on her experience of living in New York City.* By creating absurd situations, the artist refers to the stereotypes of America and life in the huge metropolis of NYC. In most of the takes, she presents herself as an anonymous freak freely roaming the city. For example, we see her in the subway ostentatiously chewing gum and adopting strange poses, or pretending to be a busker collecting money in a hat. In another scene, the artist appears in a launderette trying with all her might to hide her laundry with her body. When creating the reality in which she wants to function, Karczmarczyk tries to be as “American” as possible. The more she tries to achieve her goal, however, the less successful she is. In the short episodes, her ambitions, dreams and stereotypes clash with the fake poses, and her life in New York becomes a caricature.

The artist frequently draws on pop culture, which is a point of fascination for her. The character she plays in American Girl seems to resemble Susan, the city-roaming lead character from the film Desperately Seeking Susan (1985) played by Madonna. In her works, the artist analyses pop culture but also reflects on her own condition. By focusing on herself, Karczmarczyk ends up in a world of fiction and the search for her identity leads her to an identity which has been created. She continues to play herself in the subsequent situations – a person whose personality is the projection of how she imagines it to be, living in a staged reality. The artist seems to be more at ease in a world of fabricated images than in actual circumstances. Indeed, Karczmarczyk seems to be quite persistent in escaping reality as it is.

Izabela Kopania

*  The work was created during a one month residence in NYC, granted to the artist by Juvenal Reis Studios (September 2010).