Jenny Haniver

A photographer steadies a Polaroid camera and composes a shot of the sky flanked by tree branches Later a woman wakes from a nightmare Jenny Haniver takes its title from a cryptid totem sold for centuries at the docks of Antwerp a Jenny Haniver or jeune danvers young girl of Antwerp is a disfigured ray or skate carcass carved to resemble an angel a devil a dragon A series of ten filmed portraits are subject to all manner of alteration By this they compose the hull of a ship wrecked on rocks sung by sirens To mirror its namesake the films plastic properties have been carved lacerated bleached otherwise stressed reshaped to transform reality into the fantastic and unknowable