Mathilde Ter Heijne

Born in 1969 in Strasbourg (France), she lives in Berlin.

Avoiding any kind of sentimentality, the artist ventures far into the depths of self-immolation and self-sacrifice. Psychological fragility, “brain-washing”, fantasies and, in general, the animist states in which the boundaries of the ego are absolutely diffused, constitute the central theme of most of her works. In Mathilde, Mathilde (2000), the artist plays the part of Mathilde, a first name that happens to be the same as the artist’s own name and that of the protagonists of three famous French films (Patrice’s Leconte’s Le mari de la coiffeuse, François Truffaut’s La femme d’à côté and Jean-Claude Brisseau’s Noce Blanche). The characters in the three films have emotional relationships with older men and all three women end up committing suicide (suicide as a shared tragic end). In her installation and in the film the artist uses a double, an “alter ego”, with whom she also commits symbolic suicide. The theme of self-immolation is also the subject of another of her videos, Suicide bomb (2000) presented in Cahors (Passerelles en Midi-Pyrénées) in which she analyses in detail this fanatical practice and how often it occurs among women, for religious, political and ideological reasons.