When one winter day at the end ofthe 1980s the Queen ofMud walked into Stockholm's most fashionable department store it was to try out perfumes. Dressed only in a thin layer of clay she was quickly chased away by the store guards. What they did not know was that she is much sought after by science, which she has long eluded; that thanks to her layer of clay she can traveI thraugh space; that the sense of smell is the only human sense she has intact, and that her constitution resembles that of a reptile. The Queen ofMud has been part of Ann-Sofi Sidén's art for over a decade; sometimes she appears in reality when one least expects it, sometimes we find her in films, videos and installations. This remarkable creature is both a prehistoric animal and a futuristic figure; she is equally at home in prehistoric time and in space science fiction. She resembles the pre-Christian and non-European goddessesl heraines of the women's movements, but lacks the edifYing elements they were endowed with. She symbolises neither women's power nor strength, but rather is a complex rhetorical figure for cultural repression. Another figure in Sidén's personal gallery is the paranoid female psychiatrist. Her backgraund exists in the real Manhattan, on West 9th Street where in 1994 Sidén participated in a graup exhibition in a townhouse which was borrawed pending being soldo The deceased Alice E. Fabian had lived half her life in the house, where she also had her practice. Some ofher things remained: books, psychiatric journals, a rug, diaries recorded on ca~settes have become part ofSidén's praduction, with the p~rmis sion ofFabian's daughter. While the Queen ofMud is entirely imaginary, the paranoid female psychiatrist is altogether a real person. However both have been detached fram their origins-the Queen ofMud becoming more and more factual and the psychiatrist more and more fictive. ln the 28 minute long 35 mm film I think I calI her QM they are combined in a work that has borrawed its form fram movies. One morning the Queen ofMud craps up under the reclusive psychiatrist, Dr. Ruth Fielding's bed. Dr. Fielding spends the rest ofthe film trying to find out who this mystical creature is. As one might imagine there is no straightforward answer to that: is she a creature fram outer space ar a female Kaspar Hauser? Or Dr. Fielding herself? Power is central to Ann-Sofi Sidén's art-but fram two different aspects. One part ofher work focuses on external power mechanisms, another on people's inner struggles. Included in the former is the work Cadex (1993), a comprehensive praject based on archive material on how women have been punished in Sweden fram the Middle Ages up to the birth ofindustrialism. The installation alludes to the aesthetics of criminology and ofthe classic museum, and consists of extracts fram trial transcripts, and the staging of punishments on video and in photographs and photos of instruments of punishment. ln the installations Days inn (1998) and Wha tald the chamber maid? (1998) hotel interiors, especially the raoms for guests, have been filmed with surveillance cameras, and video monitors (like surveillance cameras) have been placed here and there in the exhibition building. Gaad marning America (1994) is more of an inner drama: five men of different ethnic backgraunds are each squashed into a narraw box, which in the video installation is matched by five monitors placed on top of each other. Their situation is to say the least pressed and underscored by the rude communication between them. AIso in the work araund the Queen ofMud and the psychiatrist the technology of power has moved inside of people. I think I calI her Queen af Mud could actually be seen as a study of the mechanisms of the human psyche. Maria Lind I think I called her QM Acho que a chamo RB 1998 filme
112 XXIV Bienal Representações Nacionais