Vanitas (Lucia)

Laine Rettmer

Vanitas (Lucia) is a mediation on the production and transmission of affect in media as it relates to the portrayal of female hysteria and sorrow. The work reinterprets the mad scene from Donizetti’s opera, Lucia Di Lammermoor, as a base to examine the control and rejection of pain in traditional depictions of women.

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Laine Rettmer is a time-based artist who works primarily in video and opera. Her visual art has been presented at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Museum, Manifesta, the Museum of Fine Art Boston, the Yuan Art Museum, and NADA NY, NADA Presents, among others. Recent awards include a MAP Fund grant for the collaborative opera Standby Snow: Chronicle of a Heat Wave and a Research Fellowship from the Center for Arts Design and Social Research. Rettmer teaches media and sculpture at the Rhode Island School of Design and has served as Residential Scholar at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.