A work originally commissioned for part of a group show of emerging Welsh artists at Chapter Art Gallery (“Ffresh3”, Wales, 2002).

The height of the plinth is such that the monitor is at the artist’s head height and the screen shows an image of the artist’s face at life-size. The sound is emitted from the speaker on the monitor. The video shows the artist attempting to sing the Welsh national anthem over and over again. She wears headphones and listens to a recording of the anthem and tries to sing along. Through listening and singing to the track repeatedly she tries to learn the words. The audience is unable to hear the original CD track and the artist cannot hear her own voice.

The work is concerned with the artist’s ambiguous relationship to her nationality: being born and brought up in South Wales and yet only having a small grasp of the Welsh language. Does the artist’s lack of knowledge of the song’s words mean she is unpatriotic, or is her attempt to learn the language a form of dedication and respect? This piece also questions if identity is inherent or learnt. A woman attempting to sing this tune places it into a new context for the viewer, which is usually performed by male voice choirs or sung by large groups in rugby stadiums. Although watching the woman perform is sometimes laughable, at other moments it is exhausting and uncomfortable. The video forms part of a larger body of work in which the artist seeks to understand her identity through repetition and language, and investigates the dislocation between the experience of the artist and that of the audience.