Tension-filled it what Annette Merrild shows. Her photographic series on Self Bondage, titled 'Self Control', reaches beyond the limits of power-crazed sexual differentiation. Self-Bondage is not only, as usual, used by its protagonists in the scene as a vehicle for enhancing pleasure in the context of auto-erotic scenarios. They free the practice of self-bondage from the mantle of perversion and raise this weaving art as aesthetic imperative.
Not the sole deviation from the sexual norm is the focus, but the artistic staging, having become a life principle of art. As a mediator between opposite realities of human experience, that of the recipients and of the artist, Annette Merrild uses photography as a means of communication. Here, the image is composed using various events, the style borrowed from the funds painting. In addition to reminiscences of Caravaggio, she places her models, using choreographic instructions in a stance that emphasizes the intrinsic value of the ropes. Here, often in dramatic visual forms recur that have been freed from all tradition of classical painting or experimental photography either. The bondages are woven by the women themselves and worn hidden under their actual day clothes. Purpose of this is sometimes the appeal of self-control and the fun to bypass societal norms. The women do not subject to a dominant sexual subject as an object. Bondage that restricts their autonomy of decision-making are not to be found. Merrilds images simultaneously represent an emancipated interpretation of female sexuality, representing the history of ideas and considered to be located in the feminist discourse and an important contribution to post-modern 'Feminist Art'.
Annette Merrild was born in Denmark in 1972. After studies of classical painting technique at the School for Visual Arts in Copenhagen between 1992 and 93, in 1995 she also worked as a wood carver with Cooperation Akamba Handcrafts Industry in Mombasa/Kenia. From 1996 to 2002, she was a student at Hochschule für Bildende Künste Hamburg and scholar of Werner Büttner and Bernhard Blume, finishing with a Master’s degree. 2004, she was awarded an honorary diploma by Franz Erhard Walther. Her conceptual photography has been exhibited successfully in Beverly Hills, Hamburg, Copenhagen, London, Madrid, St. Petersburg and Warsaw. Annette Merrild lives and works in Barcelona.