Bridget Baker’s protagonist the Blue Collar Girl is an alter ego for the artist, a heroine who is endlessly resourceful. She is a modern nomad who must carry out her mission wherever in the world she finds herself. One might draw a parallel with the experience of the contemporary artist who is frequently invited to participate in art events in a far-off country, where she is expected to produce an art intervention that both reflects her own artistic production and engages with the specifics of the new place.
“When you are overseas you are always looking for spaces into which you can project the ‘myth making,’ the narrative you are working with,” Baker has said. “The fact that the environment is unknown to you projects the validity of that mythical narrative. You don’t necessarily have a real understanding of those spaces. It’s a matter of: ‘This is my view of the city, this is what I am seeing as an outsider.’ ”
And what is the Blue Collar Girl’s mission? In each new place she must find an appropriate way to inscribe her message to the world, branding that place with her slogan “Only you can. ©.” Baker was brought up in a family with strict Christian values, and took this phrase from the Bible, though its very modern phrasing sounds like an injunction of empowerment from Oprah.
It is also part of the mission to leave the message in a remote place that requires the skills of a stuntwoman to reach—in Valais, Switzerland, the actress playing the Blue Collar Girl was dropped by helicopter into a snow valley and is a mere dot in the central frame of Baker’s triptych. It is only in the third and final scene of the piece that we see a close-up of the “Only you can. ©” message carved into the ice.
All of Baker’s Blue Collar Girl series are photographic triptychs: narratives that read as a film sequence. The first panel of each triptych sets the scene. In the second, our heroine is seen in a long shot, dangerously undertaking some difficult-to-distinguish action. In the third the camera moves in for a tight close-up of the message, confirming that the Blue Collar Girl’s mission has indeed been accomplished.
In 1997 Baker made an autobiographical installation in which inflatable—but easily punctured—kickboards were embroidered with the certificates earned for childhood and student skills, and installed floating on a portable swimming pool. Entitled Bridget Baker—BAFA (Stell.), BA Hons. (FA)(Stell.), MFA (UCT) cand.—Baker’s installation read as the self-doubt of a young woman wondering whether she had been adequately equipped to face life. Ten years later the artist’s immaculate presentation of her highly resourceful Blue Collar Girl series shows that those skills were not so useless after all.
“The Blue Collar Girl” (Cape Town) 2004
Lambda print and Diasec at Grieger, Dusseldorf, Germany
54.5 x 241.5 cm
Image courtesy of the artist and the João Ferreira Gallery, Cape Town
Collection: Iziko South African National Gallery, Cape Town
Johannesburg Art Gallery
Inhouse Brand
Fisher Collection
Starkmann Collection
© Bridget Baker
“The Blue Collar Girl” (Maputo) 2005
Lambda print and Diasec at Grieger, Dusseldorf, Germany
54.5 x 241.5 cm
Image courtesy of the artist and the João Ferreira Gallery, Cape Town
Collection: Standard Bank
University of South Africa, Pretoria
© Bridget Baker
“The Blue Collar Girl” (Valais, Switzerland) 2006–07
Lambda print and Diasec at Grieger, Dusseldorf, Germany
60 x 241.5 cm
Image courtesy of the artist and
the João Ferreira Gallery, Cape Town
Collection: Suburban Films Collection
© Bridget Baker