In a video recorded by Icelandic artist Ragnar Kjartansson, he stands side by side with his mother, Guðrún Ásmundsdóttir, in front of a bookshelf, as if posing for a photo. Ásmundsdóttir was 65 at the time and appears with a halo of greying curls, wearing a red cardigan. She looks up at her smartly dressed son, then repeatedly, noisily, spits into his face.
“I wanted to make a brutal work,” says Kjartansson of the video, which he made in 2000 while at art school in Reykjavík. He almost succeeded. For most of it, Kjartansson mutely accepts the abuse from his stony-faced mother. Occasionally, though, the pair dissolve into laughter.
