8 artists who use suffering to create

The Saint-Étienne Métropole Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MAMC+) has decided to participate in the House of Dust exhibition, drawing on the approximately 4% of women who have composed their extensive crafts for sixty years. Collections of 20,000 works.

Based on this sad observation, the institution is exhibiting 130 works revolving around themes such as language, body and matter until April 10. To mark the occasion, we’ve selected eight famous artists from their collections who have revealed their pain, transformed their trauma, or challenged their bodies to create.

Gina Pane, head of body art, uses her body to express herself, create and communicate the values ​​she holds dear. Poetic and political, his works often take the form of extraordinary performances that push the limits of what is possible, and monumental installations built on wood, sand and earth.

In sunset, the french artist uses two mirrors to bury a ray of sunlight into the ground to heat up a part of the land without light to keep it fertile. He tests the soil, exhausts his body, reconnects with tradition, and longs for agrarian ritual. “protect the energy sourcenecessary for life” and “to fertilize the nutritious earth”.

In food, He eats 600 grams of spoiled meat, an hour and a half “disrupts the connection between the organs of the digestive tract […] and momentum […] nutrition”. Another example of creation through the suffering of the body, Continuation of the wooden road which symbolically deals with problems of communication between people.

Gina Pane continues it as part of this performance, which represents real physical effort and was immortalized by Françoise Masson. “35 kg sleepers” on foot for kilometers for “extend existing boardwalk” between two villages, tells us MAMC+.

Born in Poland in 1930, Magdalena Abakanowicz lived through two World Wars and the Cold War. The traumas of our great history and “The Horrors He Witnessed” staying in his mind infected a good part of his artistic creativity, “from the difficulty of obtaining raw materials to the desire to break artistic traditions”, Provides detailed information about the Stefanois museum.

“Made of linen and resin,” from “body parts”his Dorsal figures he cannot escape his past. This is part of the headless statues “His Period of Changes”, It started in 1973, which allows it to explore “raw and perishable materials”. Because of these silhouettes “prostrated and petrified,” those who “common bodies”, spectral, anguish, effaced, may refer to Pompeian dramas “personal drama” or victims of world wars.

Death is a very relevant subject with Kiki Smith. The German artist sees his art as catharsis, a way to purge inner demons and existential anxieties. For example, in one of his untitled works, he drew a woman in a coffin on Nepali paper to symbolize the fear of death.

Referring to the appearance of the aging epidermis, this thin and crumpled paper reflects the fragility of our mortality, our transience and emptiness on Earth. “The woman leaning on her chest holds an oak leaf, a symbol of longevity and transition between worlds”, says the museum. Made after the death of a family member, this piece allows him to accompany the mourning ceremony.

Geneviève Asse, only 22 years old, went through the apocalypse and chaos of the Resistance during World War II. It is after these traumas that he turns his art into color, “Silence, counting and purity”, Lists MAMC+. If we often talk about “Klein blue”, know that there is also “Asse blue”, which is between sky and slate.

In writing and Vertical Light IIfor example, the Morbihan-born artist immerses his audience in blue, luminous, shimmering, calming and deep monochromes. “The effect of transparencies and the superposition of white and blue can recall the humidity of the seaside air, dear to the artist who painted for the rest of his life in his home on Moines Island, Brittany”the museum gives us information.

Jackie Winsor thrived in the heart of the minimalist circles of the 1960s and 1970s, where industrial materials and grid patterns were king. The visual artist quickly distinguished himself and established himself by incorporating natural and handmade materials into his artistic practice. His statue Closed Grid it adopts the minimalist tradition, but instead of iron and steel, it uses young tree trunks held at intersections with balls of string.

“Winsor compares his method to the ceremony in which each is performed movement of the mind, eye, or hand is charged with ritual emotion to emphasize the density, weight, and solidity of its structure.”, defines the MAMC+ exhibition cartel. It indicates suffering and physical demand in the work of collecting such hard and heavy parts. He tests his body for each of his ambitious works.

To old tapestries It is a project by Louise Bourgeois that takes the form of a beautiful red book where language is important. Remembered by her father’s humiliation and deception, the feminist artist here says, “Resistance to the role given to women”, exhibition curator Alexandre Quoi says during a guided tour.

Various cases of domestic violence are exposed, for example, the singer Cher and her producer Sonny, or the famous couple embodied by Carl André and Ana Mendieta, whose death, suffering from defense at the age of only 36, always points to a conspiracy. We can also see the words in red capital letters being shouted out there “don’t refuse” Where “emirs”.

The photo, “Max in Sharon’s apartment, under a picture of his mother Cookie,” was taken in New York in 1998, nine years after the death of Cookie Mueller, Nan Goldie’s eternal muse, who died of AIDS. . A well-known photographer took a portrait of Cookie for the first time in 1976, at her birthday party, and for the last time in 1989, when she went missing.

Nine years later, the artist remains marked by the one who became his dearest friend and to whom he dedicated numerous series and visual diaries. Here, by representing her son Max under Cookie’s picture, she’s doing what she does best: honoring the memory, preventing it from being forgotten.

“The cake was bright, beauty, my idol, […] one of my best friends. […] NOWe have been through the best and the worst together. […] I always thought that if I took enough photos, I wouldn’t lose anyone or anything. […]

We were a gay and straight family. Cookie and I were bisexual. […] We celebrated Christmas at his house, and he gave us opium and turkey. We went out every night. Everyone was drinking heroin for fun; no one depended on him. Sharon had lived with Cookie for a long time. Sharon had a hard time when Cookie started having sex with men. I was their confidant.

Later, Cookie traveled to Italy where she met the Italian painter Vittorio Scarpati. Later he came to New York and they got married. Both of them were HIV positive. In September 1989, Vittorio died. Soon after, Cookie lost her voice; he could no longer speak. [Après la mort de Vittorio], Cookie kind of gave up. […] He no longer spoke and walked only with the aid of a cane. Then he let himself die.” the American photographer in the film speaks contact, By Jean-Pierre Krief.

In hero, Marina Abramovic commemorates her father one year after his death. The Serbian artist stands straight and proud on a white horse, holding a flawless flag, with the national anthem of Tito’s era. Her father was a well-known soldier, a national hero, and this work, called the “grandmother of the play”, tells of his painful mourning and inner peace based on his personal mythology.

“Shaken by the last conversation with his father, Abramovich overcomes his pain and guilt. A white horse means meeting his parents during the war. The white flag represents the allegory of death, before which we must all abdicate. The national anthem, now banned by state authorities, is a metaphor for the wars that marked the history of his country.” Etienne tells his museum.