THE COLLECTION questions the poetry of the body and the politics of nudity. The gaze and the power shift between the one looking and the one been looked at; the beauty, the fantasies and the ultimate ephemeral quality of those actions. The erotic body is vulnerable as much as it is a facade.

In THE COLLECTION the physical vocabulary is entirely appropriated from famous nudes throughout art history. By borrowing those “nudes” chameckilerner aims to objectify the performers naked body, enabling the viewer to gaze safely: “Nakedness only becomes exhibitionism when it is reflected back through another’s shame.”  (Professor Barbara Browning, NYU)

Many of the poses are iconic art pieces. To imitate them demands for specificity, so they feel strenuous, and slightly odd. The lack of comfort on the performers’ body, reminds the viewer that those poses did not originally inhabited these bodies, they have been “displaced”, in time and place.

In THE COLLECTION, the filmmakers set up a framework for the audience to safely gaze – through appropriation, through the camera lenses. Once the audience connects with the body, the material becomes a personal trajectory to project ones own associations. At least until the performer gazes back.