Guardian Angels
Installation, Political / Social, Human figure, Sacred / Mythological, Various materials, 300x150x100cm
‘Guardian Angels’ is a pictorial installation that acts as a vindication of each individual’s right to freedom of expression while simultaneously bearing testimony to the power of art to stir emotions, trigger social change and reach people’s core in a way which rational argument may not.
It refers to the tragedy of the desaparecidos in Argentina (1976-83) and is inspired from the play ‘Por La Vida’ (written and performed by Elena Dragonetti and Raffaella Tagliabue). Many of the desaparecidos were artists (in the broadest sense of the word) and their crime, which they paid for with their lives, was to use their self-expression as a tool for social change.
The installation consists of two paintings (oil on iron sheets) and the artist’s own chair, dirtied with paint from years of use in her studio, suspended by nylon thread about 1 metre in front of the two paintings. On the floor beneath the chair is a pile of rock salt – a symbol of tears and purification as well as the ocean where the desaparecidos were thrown by the ‘deathflights’. The two girls, one a ghost from Argentina’s past and the other a contemporary girl today, guard the chair – a symbol of the freedom of expression.
It refers to the tragedy of the desaparecidos in Argentina (1976-83) and is inspired from the play ‘Por La Vida’ (written and performed by Elena Dragonetti and Raffaella Tagliabue). Many of the desaparecidos were artists (in the broadest sense of the word) and their crime, which they paid for with their lives, was to use their self-expression as a tool for social change.
The installation consists of two paintings (oil on iron sheets) and the artist’s own chair, dirtied with paint from years of use in her studio, suspended by nylon thread about 1 metre in front of the two paintings. On the floor beneath the chair is a pile of rock salt – a symbol of tears and purification as well as the ocean where the desaparecidos were thrown by the ‘deathflights’. The two girls, one a ghost from Argentina’s past and the other a contemporary girl today, guard the chair – a symbol of the freedom of expression.
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