Nan Goldin: Chasing a Ghost, at Matthew Marks, features a three-screen projection that explores the institutionalization and suicide of the artist’s older sister Barbara. Entitled Sisters, Saints, & Sibyls, the multimedia installation begins with the story of the third-century Saint Barbara, who was imprisoned by her father in a tower and later murdered by him. The legend, often depicted in painting and sculpture, serves as an allegory for her martyred sister, and imbues the subsequent narrative with heroism.
'I hurt myself today, to see if I still feel'
Goldin narrates the 40-minute projection in her own words. Her prose is plain, but she uses music to great effect, and the result is very moving. (I could listen to that Johnny Cash song 100 times.) Goldin recounts her sister's short life (she lived to be nineteen) with family snapshots and more recent photographs - of a psychiatric institution, the train tracks where she died, and her gravestone. The images don't actually betray her sister's suffering - indeed, it's not even clear why there was so much discord between Barbara and her parents - but we imagine it, and it is crushing.
Goldin's narrative then shifts to her own life - how she grew up expecting the same fate, how she sought out an alternative family, and how she turned to drugs. Seen from this perspective, her life story becomes an inevitable struggle with addiction and even self-mutilation. There is little redemption in the story, save for Goldin's tender portrayal of her aging parents. And that is the point, finally: The photographs in the exhibition, by turns steady and wavering, convey an odyssey of guilt, horror, and pain, and then return to the parents.
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