list.co.uk/festival Rachel Maclean | FESTIVAL FEATURES
QUEEN
OF HEARTS
Video artist Rachel Maclean talks to Rhona Taylor about zip-sliding thistles, wind farm crucifi xions and Scotland’s national identity crisis
R achel Maclean is playing her cards close to her chest. Her festival show at Edinburgh Printmakers, a series of screenprints alongside The Lion and the Unicorn, a video which explores Scottish national identity, gives nothing away about her politics. Instead, she wants I HEART SCOTLAND to create a debate around national identity and the vote on Scottish independence. ‘All the work deals with Scottish identity in relation to the referendum, or at least using that as a context. It’s not a directly political thing in terms of “Yes” or “No”. It’s more about a discussion of national identity within that context.’
Glasgow-based Maclean works largely in video, creating kitsch, theatrical works that cross between real and imagined histories and futures. With Scots going to the polls next September to decide the future of the UK, Maclean has drawn on both the genuine and mythological stories on which popular ideas of Scottish identity are based, creating a playful narrative that addresses a very weighty contemporary debate. ‘I’m interested in how national identity – or what we think of as our national identity – is a really weird amalgam of historical facts, and the fictional products that have come out of that. A lot of my work plays about with that and pushes it into playful directions.’ ➙
1–8 Aug 2013 THE LIST FESTIVAL 17