Artwork name: Travestie
a joint work by Revital Arbel and Friedemann Derschmidt
Collage of Photographs
The rôle travesti is the trouser role and in ballet, where the dominant language is French, opposite-sex roles are danced en travesti or en travestie. The word means “disguised” in French. Depending on sources, the term may be given as travesty, travesti, or en travesti.
This work consists of several photo snippets. Firstly, there is a series of photos of Revital Arbel’s eldest son, who is dressed as a nurse in a Purim costume. The other photos show Friedemann Derschmidt’s grandmother’s brother-in-law in two very different situations. One as a so-called Flintenweib – a military ruse in which Wehrmacht soldiers disguised themselves as Russian peasant women in order to be able to get closer to the enemy, and in the other pictures you can see the same man dressed as a woman in a classic play. These pictures come from a US prisoner of war camp in Colorado / USA.