The multimedia installation Her is a project initiated in 2014 by Louis Hothothot and Artémise Ploegaerts, and was made in close collaboration with Dutch dancer from China Ying Matthijsse. Combining archive, choreography, and video, the work questions how the individual can be identified, actualized, and organized.

The first part focuses on the moving body, its corporeality, and the life as such. Using digital images, an intimate and intimidating relation is created between the video and the viewer. Ying’s body becomes familiar and uncanny at the same time. Rather than letting the viewer read the body through cultural connotations that might be produced, technology is here able to bring the spectator to think of the body in its biological aspect and of the abstractness that can emanate from it. A certain anonymity remains during the whole video in order to avoid prejudices made by the Western and Eastern gaze. Movement and visuals become then inseparable. The second part of the installation, the archive, reveals the biographical with Ying’s personal story; a young woman whose adoption by Dutch parents disorients her sense of belonging. Both sections question their own separation.