Resili-ART
Resilience is the psychological ability to overcome hardship. Along with the concept of overcoming, it also entails that of personal growth. The works featured in this exhibition have been created during a period of both worldwide and individual stress, uncertainty and solitude. Set up as projects in September when authors were embracing a relatively new normalcy, their processes were shaken by the second wave of the covid-19 pandemic. Organized by the rotating ideas of Acceptance, Introspection, Fear and Change of Narrative, all together these pieces illustrate human complexity and its creative power to generate divergent thinking in difficult times.
ACCEPTANCE: it is what it is
Acceptance is a necessary step towards healing the soul. Maesus by Blumberg depicts a human being whose gestures express deep sorrow. Far from refraining this emotion, the figure decides to accept them and let them flux through his body provoking a posture of pathos, as if he was almost dancing with sadness. The image gives us permission to feel upset when reality around us trembles and turns into a disturbing new normal of faces wearing masks. In The System, England´s self-portrait looks at us defiantly. The title triggers the concept of biopolitics and reminds us how social order has always affected the regime of bodies and their codification.
We will always remember 2020 as the year when the whole world modified the way we present ourselves in public thus restricting our identity. Self-portraits in art history have traditionally captured an intimate moment of reflection, both figuratively and literally, between the mirror and painter; an opportunity to honestly confront themselves. England´s portrait, however, considers the twofold function of this new element filtering and blocking personal encounters. In the same way, Blumberg´s Woman with drapery, ironically replaces the traditional loincloth (perizonium, linteus) for a medical mask that only covers the bottom of the model´s face. The image suggests a recent alteration of the concept of obscenity. The ob- scene refers to what is supposed to be hidden from public view and appoints the nose and mouth as those parts of the body that the new visual regime prohibits. An interference in individual and social freedom aimed to protect us. This has transformed the dance with sadness into a dance with anger where bodies have been taken to the streets in the choreography of unrest as van Hoogstraten has sharply captured in the photograph Protest.
[masterslider alias=”acceptance”]
INTROSPECTION: introspicere, to look inside
The months of social distance, lockdown and solitude have also offered precious moments of introspection in which we have been pushed indoors. During that time, screens, balconies and windows became our only way to communicate with the outside world. Summer by van Hoogstraten and the series The ordinary morning 2 and 4 by In´t veld inform the new relations that we have established with those real or virtual frames through which we have been negotiating our positions in the world. This interior-exterior dialectic is also proposed by the two ceramic pieces Hufsa, Bowl 1 and Tufsla, bowl 2 by Stokke. These pieces with a strong homely appearance touch on the relationship between outside: wild nature and inside: domesticated decoration. The bowls invite us to reconnect with domestic interiors and the beauty of quaint everyday details. In the same sense, we can understand Schiller´s After Portrait of Leopoldo de’ Medici in swaddling by Jacopo Ligozzi. In Schillers´ own reframing of the classical piece, draperies, tissue qualities, embroidery and laces are zoomed and enlarged in scale. This enhances the monumentality of textile labor and the hypnotic effects of staring at the patterns that so long took to be sewn.
The attention to the details of interior domestic spaces that for long periods have constituted our own finite universe is also extended to nature as an emblem of the outside world as well as a sign of hope. Journey and Harvest by Stokke and A Poppy and the Bee by Hazenberg express a close observation of nature in its great simplicity: as a safe place where we can always return to grasp a sense of continuity. Plants keep growing and bees keep looking for flowers as they have always done.
[masterslider alias=”introspection”]
FEAR: defeating one’s demons
A walk around Florence shows the number of grotesque creatures in ornamentation, cornices, or door knockers. As we can see in Leggio, My Armida or Johnson, Scylla and Charybdis, irrational fears have materialized in similar manner. Monsters, dragons and snakes from the depth of Hell or the bottom of the Ocean provoke curiosity and fear. The representation of these monsters has been believed to neutralize the thread therefore turning into a sort of apotropaic function. These authors present a disarmed and personal version of these monsters following a process of creative manipulation.
In Blumberg Abel slain by Cain in turn, the spectator is challenged to look the dead body of Abel in the eye. The helpless posture along with the chiaroscuro contributes to the distress caused by the confrontation of some our most basic and ancestral fears. However, once again, the act of representation can transform vulnerability into strength. The elaboration of fear through mythological stories of death or legends involving reptiles and monsters, capture our inner demons and mental boundaries to teach us, protect us and keep moving forward.
[masterslider alias=”fear”]
CHANGE OF NARRATIVE
Art can provide a safe passage when we need to escape from reality like Dimuccio´s Self Portrait that takes us to a joyful universe where life is in technicolor. In the same way, Leggio´s captivating portraits of Isabel 1 and 4 are a beacon of light that can hold us for, a moment, suspended from reality.
A change in discourse can help us make sense of a situation. For example, both pieces by Manghnani operate at a metaphoric level; Swish depicts a fish jumping out of the water questioning the role of our natural habitats. What effects do our home, work, geographical position and bodies have in ourselves? This image suggests the need to get out of our comfort zones, as fishes do out of water, in order to survive. Hold on symbolizes both the resistance to accept and adjust in the face of change. The hand grasps to what and how we know making us inflexible to be molded by life events. Paralleling, it represents the idea of holding on to life, to optimism, to opportunities -a message to resist.
Resilience is a psychological term that nevertheless implies a material element in its semantics. Resilience is the condition that allows matter to bounce back after being submitted to changes. Art is the material product that the artists of this exhibition wield when facing hardship. The result is a dialogue on acceptance, denial, anger, fear, the need to escape and overcome. In a year in which uncertainty has dominated us, art remains the constant support that we can rely on.
– Mª Isabel Carrasco Castro
[masterslider alias=”change-of-narrative”]
LdM Gallery Coordinator: Federico Gori
LdM Professor – Department of Painting, Drawing and Mixed Media
Fall 2020 LdM Gallery Intern: Teagan O’Connor
Marist LdM student
Fall 2020 LdM Intern Supervisor: María Isabel Carrasco Castro
Program Director – Marist Madrid