Ulrike Rosenbach | Bindenmaske, 1972
In the early 1970s, when Bindenmaske was created, the structure of Ulrike Rosenbach's (*1943 in Bad Salzdetfurth) video works was still deliberately simple. In them, the artist usually performs a very simple action, facing the camera head-on, shot in an interior setting, and filmed in black and white. Wrapping her own head is a recurring motif in these early video works. While in Madonnas of the Flowers (1975), the artist conceals herself behind a gauze veil, surrounded by a halo of rays, in the somewhat earlier Mon petit chou (1973) she covers herself with cabbage leaves (an allusion to the French folk myth that children are born from cabbage heads, and the related endearment mon petit chou [my little cabbage]), and in Bindenmaske (1972) – slowly and attentively – with a gauze bandage.
In later video works such as Don't Believe I'm an Amazon (1975) or Reflections on the Birth of Venus (1976/78), which are also part of the collection of the Kunstmuseum Bonn, the artist uses blending techniques to juxtapose or interlace female role models in order to reflect on them, deconstruct them, and create new models of identity. In Bandage Mask, this synthetic technique does not yet exist – in place of the face, there is nothing. Through the carefully executed act of care, the face is erased. What remains is less a mask than a void.
