Widow's End
Synopsis
The perils of isolation and climate instability meet in this split-screen video set against the backdrop of a volcanic red rock quarry in southern Iceland. Caught in an extreme, inhospitable landscape, a bereaved woman finds herself enveloped in a swath of black fabric. The intensity of her stillness combines with a stark sound score to form a slowly shifting visual tableaux that explores the terrain where inner and outer realities collide.
Artist Profile
Jil Guyon
Jil Guyon is a multidisciplinary visual and performance artist whose solo, image-based movement experiments for stage, print, chosen sites, and new media, excavate the dark regions of the female psyche. Her work has been described as “new, dramatic, beautifully executed” (Ms. Magazine) and “moving, an emotional labyrinth” (Die Presse, Vienna).
Credits
| Director | Jil Guyon |
| Performer | Jil Guyon |
| Original Score | Chris Becker |
| Cinematography | Valerie Barnes |
Director's Statement
This video is part of a collection of solo, movement-based cinematic short videos entitled “The Widow Series.” In each creation, the Widow character explores the contours of grief and transcendence through ritualized gesture. The desolation of her interior world is both reflected in, and witnessed by, the shifting typographies she is compelled to traverse. Archetypal subtexts—the movie star; the survivor; the lonely wanderer—arise and dissolve, creating a symbolic arena for the investigation of female agency in the wake of loss.
Throughout the series, deep presence merges with autobiography, strangeness, poetry, and catharsis to create a non-linear visual narrative free of singular intent—inviting viewers to make intuitive connections between personal history, images, and ideas.