Common Love,
Aesthetics of Becoming
April 27–June 11, 2011
Rona Yefman
Pippi Longstocking, The Strongest Girl in the World, 2006
Single-channel video, color, sound
3 min. 50 sec.
Courtesy the artist
In Pippi Longstocking, The Strongest Girl in the World (2006), Rona Yefman takes on a geopolitical border. The video shows her collaborator, the artist Tanja Schlander, dressed up as a contemporary version of the character invented in the 1940s by the Swedish writer Astrid Lindgren. With her bare hands, Schlander repeatedly attempts to dislodge the concrete wall that separates the West Bank from Israel. In doing so, she conjures the "power of life" by mining the traits of the fictional Pippi, that is, her nonconventional femininity, physical strength, and indignation at injustice.14 Yefman's video further reveals unanticipated encounters: local Palestinians encourage Schlander's efforts to channel Pippi's strength in the cause of peace.