DIARIO DEL CORPO
16 Jan 2016 – 26 Feb 2016
Solo show by Italy-based Iranian artist Neda Shafiee, whose artistic research revolves around the topic of the human figure, developed through the languages of sculpture, painting and installation art.
A number of her recent and previously unseen works are on display, the fruit of a narrative and sensory journey which comes to its full realisation in the plastic and inner evolution of these site-specific sculptures-installations.
The two large papier-mâché sculptures on display crystallise in space and come to life, turning the most graphic, explicit and visible elements of their respective drawings into a number of intertwined references, hints and connections, that can be followed and traced throughout the rooms, where symbols related to the inner side of the human body as a repository of mystery are powerful and all-pervasive.
The sculpture representing the female figure – its swollen womb reminiscent of a pregnant woman – is arepository symbolising fertility of the body and the mind, a metaphorical fullness, the development of something that is coming to life or turning into something else, translated into the creative power which has always been intrinsically associated with the feminine body. Shapes replicate the minimalist traits of the drawings, where physical features blend into (and are indeed perceived as) round, rotating and sinuous shapes, reminiscent of the most powerful archetypes of the feminine universe.
The installation-sculpture Flusso 2, portraying an anthropomorphic figure inside a cube, instead, is surrounded by suspended elements, which seem to invade the main body. The geometrical shape of the cube, always an emblem of rationality, represents and marks the borders of the obscure and mysterious side that there is inside each of us and stems from our relationship with and our approach to life and existence; the suspended elements, on the other hand, symbolise the plethora of facts, situations and conditions that we bump into, the stream of life. A continuous flow that we try to stop, to crystallise into fixed and stable forms, inside and outside us, like events, opinions, ideals. Yet, in this work, motionlessness and movement meet and merge together in a deft and plastically graceful manner, in an alternation of emptiness and fullness where the cube is no longer a cage or a tangle, like in the artist’s previous sculptures, but assumes a different role, fading into its own reduced and indented contours, while introversion and mystery yield to an openness to the outside world. The static and motionless man lets the flow invest him and pass him by; he is no longer afraid and the cube is no longer a repository-shelter.
EMMEOTTO GALLERY
Via di Monte Giordano, 36 | Palazzo Taverna
Rome