A MOTHER FOR EARTH

Maja Arte Contemporanea is happy to announce a new combined exhibition. Between May 5 and June 18 2022 its rooms in Via Monserrato 30 in Rome will host a series of sculptures com-pleted by German artist Janine von Thüngen alongside paintings by Iranian artist Leila Vismeh. The gallery has previously curated personal exhibitions for both artists.

What if? What if the potency of an artistic message could be used to represent an alternative vision; if through the soft, rich sensuality of von Thüngen's female nudes we could envision a deep sense of fullness, fecundity, and abundance? If we managed to affirm life - and the implicit care required by it - by sharing the varied chromaticisms that abound in Vismeh's painted ma-ternities? How frightening would it be to bid goodbye to a persistent present perfect and to assert its opposite instead; to wave goodbye to the 'clan' and state proudly: “I am different”.

In commenting on von Thungen's sculptures, Isabella Ducrot writes "[they] occupy space as a multitude of question marks. They demand responses, obstinately, never seeking to be reas-suring. […] Evidently, almost seductively, each of these statues, whether big or small, combines opposite personalities. The women are bold, liberated, free from allusions to edenic deities or sacrality […]. Yet in spite of their assuredness and determination, these statues are headless. It does not seem as though they have lost their head, but rather as if they never had one."

The same absence is found in the faceless figures on Vismeh's canvases. Margareth Dorigatti notes, "If life is both a struggle and a balancing of opposites, then 'polemos' (war) becomes what it is precisely because it is not its opposite. Thus, as Spinoza believed, 'every determina-tion is, simultaneously, a negation.' When Leila Vismeh conceives the female anatomy, alone, or with another human being in her arms, she proclaims her analytical vision; the latter then becomes a rapid, firm gesture which carries emotions while simultaneously censoring. In can-celling, the creative act unites; in dividing, it harmonises."

To the potential question, raised by future women: "Women: who were they?" there will be answers which we are not allowed to give today; that is the mystery of our present time. We cannot know now how we were. [Isabella Ducrot, March 31, 2022]