Close/Close
Exhibited in ‘Gwenan International: OMG a show’ group show, curated by Gwenan Davies
Glasgow Project Room, Glasgow. November 6 – 15 2025
Video, Poem + Performance: MV Brown
CGI Assistance + Set + Lighting: Saturn Akin
Close/Close is a video work consisting of the artist’s digital dopplegänger, MV Beta, reciting a poem stitched from clinical language taken directly from the artist’s medical notes, interrupted by their own words. It begins in a tight close-up on the avatar’s face, relaying something between report + confession; MV Beta is a mask that reveals. The camera slowly pulls back to show the avatar in a replica of the artist’s bedroom, placing the viewer as if they’re lying beside them on the bed. Intimacy builds, but so does distance: the voice sounds like the artist, yet it’s an AI clone, raising questions about authenticity and where the “self” is situated when the body becomes record, diagnosis, and data. Made in the wake of a long road to an endometriosis diagnosis and laparoscopic surgery, the work explores tensions between medical exposure and emotional exposure: a body opened up through surgical intervention, and a mind laid bare through desire and longing. MV Beta isn’t an idealised double, but a speculative surrogate: a leaky prosthesis for the glitchy reality of living with a chronic, invisible illness.
