PEAKING THROUGH THE GARDEN’S BARS OF MARINA WOISKY – NOMADIC IMAGES BETWEEN ILLUSION AND REALITY

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Un post condiviso da L.U.P.O. – Lorenzelli Projects (@lupo.lupo.lupo.lupo)

Welcome to Italy, how do you feel here?

I’m feeling very well, thank you. I could reproduce my studio here, so it’s nice to work in a very similar way to the way I work in Brazil. Also, because the materials that I use here are very similar, the epoxy resin is of amazing quality.

Introduce yourself, tell us a bit about you. Where did you learn? How did you start? What is the Brazilian art scene like? Do you think your research fits into a specific context, or do you see yourself as fairly unique?

I’m Marina, 28 years old. I live and work in Sao Paolo, Brazil. I graduated in visual art in Brazil and started my research at the university when I was learning the techniques of image reproduction. Then I started working in a private collection to catalogue their objects, and there I started to be interested in antiquities. Regarding the Brazilian scene, I think we have really good artists, very young too, with lots of complex researches. Brazil is an amazing place from that point of view. If my research is inside a more general context? I think some artists have some relations/something in common with me because we work with image reproduction and also animalistic forms and everything, but I don’t know if I can tell that my research is inside a more general common context, I think this classification can close possibilities. But, I have to say one thing: I think my work wouldn’t be born if it wasn’t in Brazil, this is important to me, I have to say that.

Now, the questions about your work. I’ll ask you questions that are starting points from where you can develop your argument, so feel free to elaborate as much as you like.  

In your works, strong symbolism appears immediately at first glance. The subjects you choose seem to evoke scenes with an ancestral, almost universal sentiment. Often, they are images borrowed from other eras and contexts like the fish you wrote your thesis about, the carp typical of the baroque fountains. In this regard, it seems appropriate to refer to the theories of a revolutionary image scholar like Aby Warburg and his concept of the survival of ancient forms (Nachleben Der Antike). Warburg argued that images don’t die but survive over time, remaining latent for long periods and then re-emerging in different epochs and contexts. So, the question is: if images don’t die, where do your images come from?

This is a very beautiful question. I think my research is based on the images I choose to work on. If I think about their status, I consider them as nomadic images. They are travelling in time, going through many times and many places, without a defined or definitive location. This is a very mysterious aspect, no?

So, these images, to who do they belong?

To the world, I think. I encounter them in my everyday life, and the thing that interests me the most is when an image captures my attention because it’s very uncommon in our world that images really catch us, really hold your gaze. When it happens, it seems that they are asking you to work on them, they’re asking to be part of the world again. They are asking me to take them back to life.

So, the images play an active role in some way? Do they have some kind of free will? Do they want to appear through you?

Yes, yes! When I’m researching on the internet, and I see an image, and I don’t know what it is, I need to go deeper and investigate about it. it looks like the image is asking me: “work with me!”

You said the you’re developing an obsession with these images. But I suggest you watch it from the another point of view: what if these images, as travelling ghosts, enter you to come back to life? What if your obsession was actually a possession by them? But I don’t wanna make this interview creepy. So, Can you talk about how you get in touch with some of your images and how you start feeling the connection with them?

So, normally, I use images from reliefs or decorative objects in general. I’m very interested in how they represent nature. I particularly like when an image tries to transform itself to appear as another thing in a mimetic way, like when materials try to be other materials, like a rock trying to be a fabric. It’s in a relief that I met the image of the fish, and I was curious to discover more about it. Studying it, I found that this fish, so similar to the one represented in the baroque decorative art, is actually coming from Asia, and in some way, it’s arrived in South America. I found so fascinating the way this image has travelled around the world. And then, after centuries, it came to me and asked me to work on it, and so I did it.

About it, I think it’s very interesting that you put your focus on reliefs and ornamental art, which are usually the frame of the “real” work of art. Often, wrongly, ornamental art was considered in a lower position in the hierarchic scale of value of art, much less important than paintings, for example. But this low consideration gives a possibility of freedom to this form of art: probably ornamental motifs are so curious and particular because they skip the status quo control, being free to reflect the real society or just the virtuosism of the sculptor, distant from the severe eye of the commitment that was focused on the main artwork. That’s why lots of pagan motifs survived ages of strict Christian control without disappearing, exactly because of their ornamental role. And now, after centuries of ornamental role and disattention, they become the protagonist in your work.

Exactly, I like to overturn their historical role with my work. Even though most of the ornaments are on the edges, they tell so many stories, even more than the main painting or sculpture sometimes. I think now we have to change our perspective and pay attention to them. They are silent, but they have lots of things to say.

Also, I would like to reflect on another aspect of your work. In our digital age, where painted works are often treated as another screen, you create objects that exist in space, often occupying it in an imposing way, and that can be approached from multiple perspectives. Indeed, you often play with the deception of a three-dimensional object that transforms into two-dimensionality from another perspective (e.g., the heron) or with a two-dimensionality that, upon closer inspection, reveals itself as three-dimensional. This play on perspectives is possible precisely because you create objects and not screens. I also notice that this tricky aspect based on distortion you love to play with also leverages other physical aspects of these objects. For example, weight or consistency: your works often appear light and soft while being very heavy and hard because they are filled with cement. At other times, the trick is in the texture: some works look like jade or stone, but it’s only an effect achieved through mimesis of painting. In short, it seems like you want to trigger a kind of coexistence of opposites, creating a territory between two states of matter. This illusion is possible precisely because of the physical nature of your works, which gives rise to very interesting perceptual paradoxes, creating a beautiful interplay of illusion and reality. Can you talk about this aspect? What does it mean to make an object instead of a “screen”? What games does it allow you to play?

Many things… yes, my creation is also about these tricky points, and I think it couldn’t work if it was just an image. It would be impossible to create this illusion and distortion without the physical nature of my work. Also, the way they become alive is a physical transformation: usually, I start with objects that I see in my everyday life, that I transfer to an image taking a picture, and then, with my practice, to objects again, ready to be captured by the pictures of the viewer and to be transformed again.  The main aspect is this dimensional transformation.  3D, then 2D, then 3D again. For me, it’s important to come back to life the image in the form of an object. I have a reference distant from the images, but for me, it fits perfectly this aspect of my work. When you see a cartoon, there is an animal crushed by a rock that becomes flattened, and then he blows on his finger, getting tridimensional again. This process is related to my work somehow. Images become objects, then images again. Distant reference but related.

Then, there is another aspect to consider about these illusions. It makes the viewer full of desire to explore the piece. When you entered my studio, the first thing you did was touch the works. I’m gonna tell you an episode. There was a group exhibition with some of my pieces. In this group exhibition, when I got into it, there was a person there. I saw him look around cautiously, finger raised, searching for a way to secretly touch the artwork. He felt an urgency to explore it with more senses—sight alone wasn’t enough for him. I saw him, and I thought: the desire is so big that this happened. So I went to him and I said “Hi”, he was so scared, I replied “It’s okay, you can touch it”. I think it’s normal, no? It’s something you cannot control, and I like this, you need to do this, it’s more powerful than you. The uncontrollable desire to explore something you do not understand. It’s not only about the view; it’s about touching it, smelling it.

So, if I understood, all this game of illusion makes you want to explore the artwork with lots of senses. This trick makes the people curious about this illusion, and so does the desire, am I right?

Yes.

Now I understand why you use the word “desire”. It’s a very erotic game. When you see something, and you don’t understand it, you feel attracted to it. But you said to him to touch it. This is the first step to destroying the idea that artwork is an image. Usually, It’s not allowed to touch an artwork, but I think you can understand something only by touching it. It’s a way to create a personal relationship with an artwork.

 Also, on this very subject, I wanted to ask you, what materials do you use? What significance do they have for you? Where do they come from?

In my practice, I use fabric that I print with common print techniques and also cement inside the piece. For me, fabric is a possibility to do many types of textures and also cement is a material that I like so much because there is a causality in this material: When it dries, it creates some crinkles and folds that interest me. I also use resin, and it’s the way for the image in the fabric to come back to life because when I use cement, the image disappears. Then I clean it, and with the resin, it appears again. It’s the magical part of the process.

So you said cement, fabric, prints of fabric, epoxy resin, then I saw animal fur, isn’t it?

Yes, I use synthetic animal fur and hairs. It’s the way to reproduce animal texture.

Cement, print on fabric, etc… it seems that we can now reveal the secrets of your illusions… also because the ‘artist’s gesture’ in your works is often hidden, not very visible. Where, in your opinion, is your gesture? What is its role? Where do you recognise yourself in your artwork? Where are you in your artwork?

This is a very good question because I made many processes that are often not visible, but there are many choices in the work, and I think that is where I am in the choices that I made. For example, when I’m going to do the sewing lines on the fabric, that is one of the most important parts of the process because it creates the volumetry, the dimension and the proportion. Also, when I put the cement inside, I choose the part that would be full of or empty of it with my hands, with the gesture of ‘amassar’ or ‘espalhar’. This is a very corporeal aspect; it’s related to how I use the body in my work because cement is a heavy material, so it’s an exercise of equilibrium. I have to feel the weight and the body of the work because when it’s finished, it has to be balanced. I like this part so much; it’s where everything can happen, and you don’t have so much control.

Now, if I were to combine these four questions, I would ask: How does your creative process usually unfold? From the idea to its realisation. Are the idea and its implementation in agreement or in contrast? Does one transform the other by betraying it, or does it enrich it, making it real? Explain to us how you carry out your work. Guide me through it.

Usually, it unfolds itself like this: something – an image – appears, stops me and says, “Come here”, I consent, and I follow it. So I start work with this image, cutting it, modifying it, studying it and then printing it on fabric. At this point, I sew in the shape that I want to give, like an embroidered empty pillow, that I fill with cement. Then it dries, so I clean it, and I use an epoxy resin to finalise the work. This is the part where images come back to life. Because it passes through dirty and cleaning: the cement makes everything dirty, then I clean it and make it visible with the resin. It looks like a photography revelation.

No mud, No lotus.

Instead, regarding the betrayal or enrichment of the realisation on the idea, I don’t feel like that. I think that the relationship between the idea and the realisation is some kind of magical equilibrium. It’s the place where there is the magical. Not only there, but there too.

And how the idea come to you?

The idea – the image that I decide to work on – come to me in my everyday life, finding me in the streets, on the internet or knocking on the door of my imagination. But once it happened that the image found me in another dimension, during a dream.

 Tell me about it.

I was travelling with my friends in Brazil to a very beautiful place, with nature everywhere, so different from The city I lived in every day, Sao Paolo. There, during the night, I had a dream. In this dream, I was with my friends, and we entered an unknown art exhibition. There, I saw an installation piece that immediately took my attention, in some way it was calling me, I was captured by it. I asked myself: Who is the artist? I have to know. So, I came closer to the target to read the name. There, on the target, was written “Marina Woisky”, my name. It was shocking for me! So, I decided to bring this piece back to life and make it exist. And so I did it. It’s an experience that I never had before, a new creative process.

As I said before, It seems that these nomadic images are looking for you. It seems that they’re considering you as a medium to come back to life. They need you in some way. For example, this piece was living in the abstract world of the oniric dimension and chose you to come back to life.

And now this dream piece has become reality for your solo exhibition Through the Garden Bars, which will open this week in Milan at L.U.P.O. It is truly an honour and an occasion to be able to see this very special work right here in Milan. But what intrigues me is precisely the name of the exhibition. What do you want to show us ‘through the garden bars’? And above all, are we inside or outside?

This exhibition started with me reading a beautiful text that was talking about the garden bars, and I imagined a secret garden that I have access to only between the bars. The text was talking about the bars as an element of possibility, the possibility of being inside and outside. The body is outside the garden bars, but you can pass your fingers inside those bars, so with the points of your fingers and your desire to enter, you’re inside too, inside and outside at the same time. But the real question of the exhibition is a consequence of the name: if there are garden bars, there should be a garden. So, where is the garden?

Where is the garden?

That’s the question. Because in the bars that I made for the exhibition, the pieces on the wall have a landscape in the background. So the landscape reminds us of the garden outside, but the sculptures – and the backgrounds too – are related to us inside the exhibition, so where is the garden?

I don’t know. And do the visitors inside or outside this garden, your garden?

I want to ask them if they are inside or outside. I’m curious about it. Where the people will be, where the people think they will be. This interests me. But more about the questions than the answer of this landscape, of this border.

Ok, so see you there.

See you!