Chantal Rousseau | commentary

And now let us weep for the lovely lovely ladies of CSI

For the exhibition at the Tom Thomson Gallery, I worked with Cornelius Krieghoff’s 19th century painting After the Kill. In response to this painting, I created a series of twelve ink drawings and an animation And now let us weep for the lovely lovely ladies of CSI, where the victim is inverted – here bodies of fictional female victims from the television shows CSI Vegas, CSI Miami, and CSI New York are depicted with a diverse range of predatory animals. Acting indeterminately as watchful, playful, or malevolent, the animals take on a totemic role. A gentle and humorous memorial to the victims of a widely popular television show, this series hints at a continuing cultural obsession with beautiful and sexy violence, and the darker undertones in Krieghoff’s pastoral landscapes.

< back