This Is Shahnoza 1
This Is Shahnoza 1
Signed Print
Julian Opie
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57 x 136cm, Edition of 40, Screenprint
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Meaning & Analysis
This is Shahnoza 1 is a print by Julian Opie from his This is Shahnozaseries from 2006. In this print Opie depicts a young woman whose shape is delineated clearly by bold, black outlines. The figure is faceless, with only a blank circle as a head hovering over her shoulders, and she slinks around a pole in only her underwear and a sheer dress.
This print is indicative of Opie’s desire to create movement through a sequence of static images, much like movement in films, and so we see the dancer moving around the pole. Opie orientates the figure’s head and body towards the viewer to suggest her awareness of being watched and makes clear that this sequence of movements is conforming to a particular performance tradition.
This is Shahnoza 1 presents the viewer with a response to iconography found in the cultural mainstream, showing an anonymous image of the stereotypically ‘sexy’ woman. Opie’s figures are therefore in line with his landscapes and still lives that form a self-conscious representation of the idea that art feeds on art. Of this, Opie has said that his picture making "is a self-conscious circular type of activity… I make art looking at other art, looking at other things in the world that look like art, making things that look like art, making things that look like things that look like art."