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A sound work for speakers, scenting the air with its narcissistic words, as French women
recite the foolish strap-lines for perfumes, claiming the phrases for themselves. Their
French accents distort the English words, stress falls incorrectly, and breaths are
misplaced. The work’s title has two meaning: in English, it means the possession of a
certain style or aplomb, while in French, it more usually means the faculty of discerning an
odour or an aptitude for intuition or perspicacity.
(This is also a book work: Flair, and a text work for walls, first commissioned in 2004 for the
Bartlett School of Architecture, University College, London.)
Mes fils 2000 to present, continuing project. C-type photographs mounted on aluminium.
A continuing series of photographs; each a medallion, like the French beauty in the
museum in Lyons, always at the back of the artist’s mind; each a portrait of an embrace, the
same woman, but a different man. There is something disquieting, for on closer view, it is
clear that woman, who is gradually aging over the years of the project, is old enough to be
the mother of each young man, She is constant, however, while each of the men is
disposable, discarded in favour of the next, one might say. And worse, these young men
are her former students.
Sharon Kivland is an artist and writer, who divides her life further between France and England. Reader in
Fine Art at Sheffield Hallam University, Research Associate of the Centre for Freudian Analysis and
Research, London, she occupies herself with fine leathers, elegant embossing, improper attributes and
borrowed vices. Attracted by Karl Marx, devoted to Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan, she frequently
withdraws from theory to the solace of Parisian department stores. Her work is represented by Galerie
Bugdahn & Kaimer, Düsseldorf (Germany). She is currently working on a series of three books, Freud on
Holiday, of which the first, Freud Dreams of Rome, is published by INFORMATION AS MATERIAL, 2006.
The second, A Disturbance of Memory on the Acropolis is published by INFORMATION AS MATERIAL and
Cube Editions (Athens), 2008. A third volume is planned for 2009, as she reconstructs Freud’s last visit to
Rome in 1923. A series of etchings, derived from the first volume, has been exhibited recently at the Freud
Museum, London, where they appeared strangely at home. A second series takes up a number of
themes: Freud and stairs, the gift of flowers, Freud and real estate, and the reason Freud changed hotels
in Paris in 1885. She is co- editor of the series The Rules of Engagement (London: Artwords 2004-2008).
Projects in 2008 include solo exhibitions at Bastart, Bratislava, where she addressed Jean-Jacques
Rousseau’s ideas on natural education; Sleeper, Edinburgh, for which she worked hard on her cross
stitch, stem stitch, and her worst traits; and Chelsea Art Space, in November, for which she is continuing
her exploration of revolutionary moments in the history of France, with particular attention to la mode. She
is Visiting Fellow in the Institute for Germanic and Romance Studies, University of London, where she is
working on the impossible translation of Freud’s work, getting rather stuck in three essays on sexuality.
