Ahwesh subjects an apparently found pornographic film to coloring, optical printing and general fragmentation; the source material threatens to virtually collapse under the beautiful violence of her filmic treatment. What emerges is a portrait at once nostalgic and horrible: the degraded image, locked in symbiotic relation with an image of degradation. —Electronic Arts Intermix
Peggy Ahwesh (born 1954 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania) is an American avant-garde filmmaker and experimental video artist. She received her B.F.A. from Antioch College. Ahwesh’s work has been shown at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, the Balie Theater, Amsterdam, Filmmuseum, Frankfurt; the Museu d’Art Contemporani Barcelona (MACBA), Barcelona, the Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, Ohio, the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, and The Museum of Modern Art, New York; her work has been included in the following festivals: New York Film Festival (1993, 1998); Berlin; London; Cairo; Toronto; Rotterdam; and Creteil, France. Her numerous awards include an Alpert Award in the Arts, a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship, and grants from the Jerome Foundation, the Creative Capital Foundation, and the New York State Council on the Arts. She teaches at Bard College. —Wikipedia