Blue notes from thin air
Blue Notes from Thin Air is a series of photographs made during the period Nicole Carstens also worked as a flight attendant. Like many artists, she needed to have a job on the side to support her art and existence. In Blue Notes from Thin Air Nicole makes a registration of existing situations without adding anything.
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In the feminist tradition she strips away the stereotype veil of glamour that still surrounds the flight attendant. What prevails is a heavy existence estranged from its context. By unveiling the banality of her job, Nicole is in a way a voyeur of her own existence.
Except for her early portraits, the whole oeuvre of Nicole Carstens is characterized by the use of readily available materials. In her installations and objects she used waste materials and objects from daily life, transforming them and giving them new meanings. The project Blue Notes from Thin Air was also inspired by her daily life, as air travel was her own work environment.
“After so many years in the air my job grew on me. Not only did I learn about place, in making myself familiar with space, there was more. There was the fusion of space and time, and the confusion. For to be technically able to be in two places at the same time. Jetlag can kill. The witness of this is the human body that one lives in and that experiences all. It cannot be called to service like a thing.”
A selection from Blue Notes from Thin Air was first shown in 1998 in The Bronwyn Keenan Gallery in New York.
In 2001 the series Blue Notes from Thin Air was shown in the Nederlands Foto Instituut in Rotterdam and a catalogue of the exhibition was published in Amsterdam.
The photographs Blue Notes from Thin Air are included in the collection of the Nederlands Fotomuseum in Rotterdam.
Publication
Blue Notes from Thin Air
Publisher: Stichting Nicole Art Sense, Haarlem; Nederlands Foto Instituut, Rotterdam
Distribution: Idea Books, Amsterdam
ISBN: 90 76085 145
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