INTRO BY SELENE BOZZATO

The exhibition is spread across three rooms, in one of which I have decided to pay tribute to four female artists and describe them with my sensitivity.
With my works I will talk about Camille Claudel, Jeanne Hébuterne, Dora Maar and Niki de Saint Phalle.

Three of them had to surrender to patriarchy and machismo, while the last one used that pain and abuse to make her art explode, in the true sense of the word.

The artists’ common thread is “madness”, for which they were condemned and paid with their art.
This common thread also brings us back to the objective promoted by the association Punto Virgola Lo scrigno (Semicolon – The casket) of which I am a co-founder: the association aims to raise awareness and support for mood disorders mental illnesses.

The other two rooms will narrate my research on femininity and its expression in art and the everyday world.

Rusalka

dedicated to Jeanne Hebouterne

Looking at them like this, one after the other, these works speak of melancholy, of wounds of the soul but also of rebirth and above all redemption. One of the paintings stands out in particular: Rusalka, dedicated to Jeanne Hebouterne, the companion of the great Modì, who committed suicide when she was very young. The girl floats in the water as if she were a goddess, her body supple and her eyes closed, abandoned. Rusalka is a wave, an ancient myth that enchants and fascinates, but as in Klimt’s “Ondine” it tells of the impossibility of belonging to a man. Pure nature of water and light, Rusalka belongs to the lake and to the night and will remain here forever. The words of Ada Merini, the great contemporary poet, come to mind. She fears loneliness more than any other evil, as Selene’s own words define it: “an acid that corrodes, nothing more to say, nothing more to tell“.

tarlo

dedicated to dora maar

The background is constructed with intense yellow and black brushstrokes: “Tarlo” is a whirlwind of color in the foreground and the sudden appearance of a face, eyes erased by dint of scratches, without identity. No one knows this woman’s inner fear, her fear of looking and being looked at. Everything has been taken from her. It is a metaphor for forced abandonment, loss of self, and artistic inspiration. It tells of the impossibility of giving art a voice if the artist is emptied, impoverished. Dora Maar, to whom this painting is dedicated, is an example of this “suffering” of art when desire is extinguished and the creative force is muted. 
The creative force is often mistaken for madness, and many, especially women, have been subjected to terrible segregation without understanding their extraordinary artistic innovation and dedication to creative work.

refer to camille claudel

The body is often the site of art. This truth has only been appreciated in relatively recent times with body art or the performances of well-known artists such as Marina Abramovic. The body and its temptations and frustrations: “Hell is overburned” or “Who will remember your name?” show the flame that burns inside the mind, that illuminates and consumes. Against a dark red background, marked by black brushstrokes that cut out the nude, the female figure is caught in a gesture of desperation. Selene immortalizes a strong and fragile woman at the same time, aware of her tragic destiny translated into a sign that “cuts” the space like a knife and freezes it in a still image. It is easy to glimpse in this almost sculptural painting of human, feminine sensibility that recalls the story of the sculptress Camille Claudel, the pupil of the great Rodin, considered by his master as the “genius of France” and then brutally locked up by her family in an asylum for a question of misunderstood “social convenience”.

lilith

dedicated to niki de saint phalle

It is no coincidence that Selene’s admired artists include the effervescent Niki de Saint Phalle, who was able to transform her weakness into strength, sublimating the pain of her terrible childhood into creative energy against the tide. Using art as a sort of picklock, the French artist shook the international art of the 1960s out of its “old-fashionedness” and academic rules, devoting herself to free self-expression with instruments and means that were unusual for the art of the time. “Lilith” is the symbol of a visionary woman who is free from conventional schemes, far from the roles traditionally imposed on her. Her long, fiery red hair frames the face of the figure who stands like a statue dominating space. Her gaze is sure, no uncertainty or second thoughts, a red circle encloses the tempting snake: a magical circle is a perfect form and at the same time the place of action of the “witch” who unites the mystical and the carnal. 
The negative sign cemented in ancestral rules of Lilith as a demonic being takes on a positive value as an explosive sign of redemption and freedom to exist. The artistic freedom was finally won by Selene.