Conceptual artist Sinan Leong Revell takes performance art to another level through her composite photographs of scenes reflecting the social media landscape in “doppelgANGER.”
By Carla Fischer / Special to Malibu Times
The images are disturbingly familiar, most recreated from real life events. A man on his knees beaten by police officers, a woman being shot in the back by a liquor store owner, a Vietnamese man with a grimace on his face, as a gun at his head goes off. There are other images without violent content, but reflecting the not-so-savory aspects of society. One, called “Bling Bling,” shows a skimpily dressed woman leaning over a man in fatigues next to a red sports car. Another called “Asylum” depicts women locked up in a grim, barred mental institution. One thing that each photo in Malibu artist Sinan Leong Revell’s new body of work, called “DopplegANGER,” contains is her image.
“I put myself into all these pictures to show how we are all connected,” Revell said at an interview at her Malibu home.
Playing a cast of characters, Revell transforms herself into the identity of all the roles in the scene. Every picture is staged and Photo-shopped together.
“When I’m recreating the scene,” Revell said, “I study the originals and get to work. It’s like acting. The face and body of each person is me. I dress the part, get into character and mood, and become the other person. In one Vietnam setup I surprised myself that I could look like that because when you’re acting it, you don’t see yourself.”
(The Vietnam setup Revell refers to and mentioned in the beginning of this article is a recreation of the infamous 1968 photo by Eddie Adams of South Vietnamese Police Chief General Nguyen Ngoc Loan executing Viet Cong Captain Nguyen Van Lem.)
In her artist’s statement, Revell explains”doppelgANGER,” is a series of self-less portraits that reflect our social media landscape … Scenes, which we apathetically accept in silence behind our screens as the ‘norm.’ … Some people may be offended by these pictures; I was, when I saw them for the first time, that is why I had to recreate them. They made me ‘doppelANGRY,’ double angry.”
Revell was born in China and raised in Australia in an atmosphere of multiculturalism. She came from a family of six. Convent educated, Revell later studied art at the Julian Ashton Art School and graduated with a degree in psychology from Sydney University. She received research and travel grants for photography from the Australian Arts Council.
Exploring forms of self-expression led her into performance art. She studied drama with the renowned Aboriginal film and stage director Bryan Syron, which led to several television and film roles. In London, Revell studied drama, acting and developed a singing career. Around 1982, she joined the legendary industrial rock band “SPK” (Socialist Patient Collective), which performed mostly in Europe and the U.K.
“The band generated noise using electric grinders, drills, bashing metal, trains and I would sing on top of this banging, chanting various ethnic sounds,” Revell said.
The artist came to Los Angeles with Graeme Revell, a well-known composer and also a former SPK member, to raise their daughter Mika, an artist, and their son Robert, a musician.
Revell grew up surrounded by different art forms. “My grandfather was a calligrapher and my brother is an art director. In Australia, my father had a restaurant and other members of my family are all in the restaurant business.”
She evolved into a conceptual artist, combining her talents as an actor and photographer to create the controversial photo composites in “doppelganger,” a German word meaning “double meaning.”
On reflecting about how she came up with the idea for this project, Revell said, “I was just thinking about how to express myself and try to reconcile the idea of all these images and media input that sail up from the television.
“I thought, I could be all these millions of faceless, voiceless people … and then oh, yeah! That’s how I’ll do it! I’ll be them!” she added, laughing ironically at her discovery. “And, in a way, I’m affected by them. When you see these images, the horrible, horrific images we see daily, it’s hard not to be affected. You put yourself in the picture, especially the Abu Ghraib pictures [with] Lynndie England, and you understand that people are making judgments against her. We all have this capacity to be violent and we do on a private level. It’s just by an accident of fate we are who we are. We could be these people in Rwanda being killed. We relate to them and then we turn the page. Art is like a mirror to reality and everyone expresses their perceptions of reality in their own way.”
Revell finds the locations, gets all the props, costumes and makeup for each shot. She usually works with one photographer. Some of the locations for the photos are in Malibu, shot at Revell’s house and Kanan Canyon, and only one uses a background from an original photograph. The prison used in the Abu Ghraib scene is shot at the old Lincoln Heights jail. It’s been closed since the Watts Riots, and is now used for movie sets. She rented it for the shoot. One picture of two natives, a Japanese tourist with the ubiquitous camera and a native from a non specific Asian country, was shot in Revell’s garden.
“They become like a different species we’re observing,” Revell said. “They’re exoctified.”
Revell shines a spotlight on lessons learned through historical pictures. In “The Rickshaw” the focus is on the relationship between master and slave, social class and the way we glorify various cultures by what we select to take from them.
“I hope people will step back, question and just take a look at what’s going on, the things they see, question themselves, and their attitudes,” Revell said.
Two shows of Revell’s work will be on view to the public: “Homeland Security Blankets,, Nov. 10, at the Red House Gallery, 1224 Abbot Kinney Blvd, Venice; and “Nov. 17, dopplegANGER,”at the L2 Kontemporary Gallery, 990 Hill Street, Chinatown. More information can be obtained at the Web site: www.sinanrevell.com