A mother for earth

The Maja Arte Contemporanea gallery, in the center of Rome, from 5th May to 18th June 2022, hosts the sculptures of the German artist Janine Von Thüngen who interact with the paintings of the Iranian artist Leila Vismeh, shouting in a loud voice an urgent request for primary protection and unconscious denunciation of war.

The exhibition, born even before the dramatic Ukrainian events that have been upsetting our reality in recent months, is anticipated as an explanation, a figuration of the denial of the war. Von Thüngen's sculptural language seeks to rediscover fullness, fecundity and abundance through the sinuous forms of female naked bodies, while Leila Vismeh's pictorial aesthetic, clearly inspired by Motherhood, implies the fear nowadays of affirming "I am different".

"They occupy space like question marks, which obstinately solicit answers, and also want to risk that they are not reassuring. It appears so clear and also captivating that in each of these statues, small or large, opposite characters coexist. , they are bold females, creatures now liberated, devoid of allusions to Edenic divinities, not at all sacral. Although they exhibit certain and determined attitudes, these women, image of the artist, are missing their heads. It does not seem that they have lost their minds, but that they never had it. "

With these words, the Neapolitan painter Isabella Ducrot describes Von Thüngen's sculptures. Headless Paleolithic Venus, prehistoric statues remodeled in a contemporary key. From the ancient statuettes echoing the femininity of the time but also the nature-man relationship, synonyms of the Mother Goddess, to the modern female nudes, almost surrealist in some ways that from cult objects become future oracles, the only ones who can answer the question: " Women, who were they? ". Hermaphrodite creatures who embodied the two opposite sexes of the human race and in a desecrating way clutter up the space, becoming protagonists of the dilemma of the female situation in the world.

The headless statues of Von Thüngen openly dialogue with the faceless painted figures of Leila Vismeh.

"If it is true that life is struggle and alternation between opposites, then polemos (war) becomes what it is because it is not its opposite and then, as Spinoza argued, all determination is negation. When it carefully constructs the anatomical female figure, alone, or with a human creature in her arms, Leila Vismeh declares her analytical vision, which, with a quick and confident gesture, lets in the emotion that cancels and becomes censorship. The creative gesture of cancellation unites in the act in which it divides and becomes new harmony ".

Thus describes the imagination of Leila Vismeh, Margareth Dorigatti, a painter who trained at the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice with Emilio Vedova. Since the dawn of history, the female figure has been associated with giving life, a symbol of fertilization, a bearer of life, since prehistoric times revered. From Aphrodite, Athens, Artemis, the Madonna with her little or dying Son in her arms, the figure of the woman today has completely changed. Today the woman, no matter how much progress she has made to achieve male status, especially in certain cultures and in certain contexts, remains a marginal figure, submissive, anxious about the urgency of protection with the need to escape and save herself.