Middle Gate

In Madrigal and Enjambment a bare wooden floor fills the screen. The dressed figures – a woman and a man respectively – roll, fold and unfold themselves, in between alternating interludes. Madrigal is a continuation of the Hommages series, in which Lili Dujourie investigates the image of the naked body. In this series of videos the artist herself often plays the model. In this work, Lili Dujourie unexpectedly turns behind her back and stares into the camera with a foggy gaze. The image suddenly comes into focus, the overview disappears. A madrigal is a musical composition for several voices. The picking of this title is determined by the poetic quality of the word, by the associations and memories the concept of the madrigal evokes from the artist. In 1976 Lili Dujourie elaborated this idea, this time using a man as the model. There is hardly any difference. The man rolls over the floor, just like Lili in Madrigal, but it takes a while before you realize it is a man. The title ‘enjambment’ refers to the deceleration in the rhythmical progression of a love poem. With Enjambment the artist wishes to approach the male in all his fragility, not in his toughness or strength. She wanted to “capture something in the male nude which leans towards the female side of the male”.