Belgian-American artist Cécile B. Evans worked at Barneys on the cosmetics counter while studying at Tisch School of the Arts in New York, and found herself baffled by the products surrounding her. Multiple commissions for the Serpentine Gallery and Frieze Art Fair later, Evans is premiering a video campaign for 'Softness,' a limited-edition beauty oil created in collaboration with art edition-makers Studio Leigh.
The clip works as a genre-splicing advertisement but also an extract from her latest art film Hyperlinks or it didn’t happen, a meandering, philosophical exploration of avatars—including a CGI model of Philip Seymour Hoffman—that is currently on display in a solo show at London’s Seventeen Gallery. The piece stars computer-animated Japanese chanteuse Yowane Haku, an avatar Evans found online. Inside a rendering of an yet-to-be-built underwater hotel, with jellyfish floating by the windows, Haku sings a heartfelt cover of Billy Idol’s “Eyes Without a Face” while performing a dance choreographed by Evans herself—all to sell us 'Softness'.
“This product is very much tied to its original source, it only exists because Yowane Haku exists,” explains the fast-rising artist. “Just like Jessica Simpson’s perfume. What is that really? Could anyone tell you what that smells like without describing what Jessica Simpson smells like? Similar to a hyperlink, you click on it and what it opens you up to is always going to be linked back to that initial connection, and there’s a whole unfathomable, impossible story contained within that.”
Dean Kissick contributes to the Guardian, i-D and Love.
Hyperlinks is on show at Seventeen Gallery, London, through December 6.