Over Gina Pane_4 Sentimental Actions
Over Gina Pane_4 Sentimental Actions
Performative iconostasis
'What role does pain play in your works?‘
What a role? Here... I am crossed by all the external stimuli of violence...
in the partitions I no longer query the body, I no longer question it, I'll listen to it (…)’.
From an interview by Lea Vergine with Gina Pane (1985)
Being able to be directly inspired by one of the reference artists of your creative path is both an aesthetic trap and a conceptual refuge. I won't try to stay balanced, well balanced between the parts, ma oscillerò in ‘partition’, divided between the painful memory of her wounds - the sentimental terrorism of Gina Pane - and the poetry of the sacred, joy-generating force of his latest works. To fall and get up we will be multiple bodies, exorcists and adventurers of our underwater world. The scene dedicated to Gina Pane is not the canvas on which to paint the wound in dark colors, but the living space in which to erect the monument to the body not tamed nor subjected to the profitable functioning of the discriminating ableism of our time.
OVER GINA PANE_4 SENTIMENTAL ACTIONS Over Gina Pane_4 Sentimental Actions is a performative creation in which the bitter and harsh beauty pursued by Gina Pane in her irreducible artistic practice, takes the embodied and disturbing form of the four performers: injured bodies, bodies of the disaster, martyr bodies, holy bodies that survived the nothingness of pain. In close poetic and formal concatenation with the radicality of Gina Pane, this new iconostasis by Lenz becomes an affective and poetic reflection of the extreme actions of the wound artist, 'without lulling ourselves in his memory, but trying to be reborn in the oxidized drops of his bloody footsteps'. Over Gina Pane_4 Sentimental Actions takes place at the center of the images-Observations, made during the performance of 1973 by Gina Pane which took place at the Diagramma gallery in Milan, entitled "Sentimental Action", in which the artist's actions metaphorized female pain as an expression of love for humanity and Nature. The religious symbolism of the torn body as a gift and of the physical and psychic wound as a multiplication of sensorial capacity are elements of great germinative power in the training and artistic practice of Maestri, whose 4 Sentimental Actions return as the fruit of inspiration, in a non-radial echo, ma multiforme. The symmetry between Gina Pane's research on the body of saints, characteristic of the last phase of the 'Partition' (works inspired by Saint Francis, San Lorenzo, Saint Peter, Saint martin, Saint John) and the martyr-body of the four performers returns to the present, in a conceptual flip button, in a process of identity transposition – Saint Apollonia, Santa Dinfna, Sant’Agata, Saint Mary of Egypt – the actual physics of physical and emotional wounds. Gina Pane's installation rereading of the saints is transmuted, in the iconostasis of Maestri in performative revival, 'Painful way' (title of a work by Gina Pane del 1988) to be explored 'here and now' to reunite through the truth of one's poetic lesions, physical and existential to the aesthetic and political thought of the artist. Over Gina Pane_4 Sentimental Actions Ideation, creation, installation Maria Federica Masters OVER GINA PANE_SENTIMENTAL ACTION N. 1 In Action n.1 the active presence – the performer Monica Barone – establishes an 'unequivocal' correspondence with the sacred iconography, an authentic reflection with the figure of Apollonia (the saint whose teeth are pulled out), in absolute coincidence with the personal martyrdom suffered. Through the performative act recalled and practiced by the performer, the wounded body is transmuted into a healed body, set free, resurrected in the loving gesture of self-giving to the world in a new political evidence. For Baron, the meeting with Gina Pane is a return to an epiphanic moment, in which the artist was active above all in the visual field: that 2000 in which the gallery owner Luciano Inga-Pin, tenacious supporter of Gina Pane, he curated a solo exhibition of Monica Barone at Contemporary Art in Milan. With this work inspired by Gina Pane my research contains and investigates pain from a certain perspective: that of care, both as an instrument of social control, both as an expression of self-determination. Drawing on my own medical history, I chose, in particular, to develop the performative action around the insertion of the nasogastric tube, as the reversal of a maneuver undergone in a ritual gesture, aesthetic and poetic, in reversing the violence of forced feeding into an awareness and power. The use of this medical device, which at the same time is a crossroads where autobiographical memories and universal symbolic meanings converge, represents the possibility of going beyond pain, as a point of arrival or intent, to carry out an act of re-appropriation of a feeling of body-psyche unity. Articulation of the s-Partition n. 1 Elements of the first Sentimental Action inspired by Saint Apollonia: the mastery of pain, the pertinacity of martyrdom, proud arrogance, the voluptuousness of extremes, the delirium of ecstasy, the mockery of the executioner. The parchment of which the miniature is made materializes in shape and size the wooden table on which the saint is tied while she is martyred - her teeth are pulled out with pincers. The tongs and a glass of milk are placed by Neosanta on a small glass cube. The cube offers metaphors of spatial reality: the void is confined within its six walls, it is ordered and bent to human measurements as in a unitarian temple where the tools are prepared, the tools and equipment necessary for the desired diet. + Action reloaded OVER GINA PANE_SENTIMENTAL ACTION N. 2 In a creative process of a-hierarchical association and dissociation between psychological and formal propositions, composed of mixtures and simultaneity, symmetries and synergies with the work of Gina Pane, Maria Federica Maestri transposes the original sentimental action into storytelling and fable-like dynamics, putting in concatenation, in this second performance, the sacred iconography of the 'Martyrdom of Saint Dinphna' – the saint beheaded by her incestuous father and protector of people with mental illnesses – and the visual activations of Riyoko Ikeda's tables, famous mangaka author of the Lady Oscar comics. In Action no. 2 the active presence – the performer Carlotta Spaggiari – establishes a profound correspondence with the different iconographic levels, in a very delicate mirroring between one's own psychic sensitivity and the image of the young saint fleeing from her father's violence, which by symbolic extension is the attempt to escape from patriarchal dominance, from authority and male power. The immoderation of her emotional contagion emerges in the plastic reconversion of the sentimental chromatography of the Saint and the Artist: in the final phase of the performance, fully coinciding with the final image of Gina Pane's performative act – the drops of blood that come out of the incision made by the rose's thorns – the performer heals the wounds, transmuting them into a new plastic form, seemingly childish, playful, harmless, yet by empathic conjunction extremely raw and painful, while the traces of hemoglobin densify into a new imaginative architecture of suffering. Similarly, the verbiage recalls the vicissitudes of Santa Dinfna in obsessive repetition, returned by the performer in an anaphoric phrasing, in which the underlining of the incipit 'my father' is the mental representation of an ineliminable persistence, of a nagging figure, of a presence impeding the female creative identity. Articulation of the s-Partition n. 2 Elements of the second Sentimental Action inspired by Santa Dinfna: empathic excess, emotional contagion, sentimental architecture, chromatic reconstruction of pain, plastic displacement of the wound. Against the wall is a large mirror in which the spectators are reflected in symmetry with the background figures of the pictorial representation on the cover by Godefroy Maes. A small sword is placed on a glass cube. + Azione object handling OVER GINA PANE_SENTIMENTAL ACTION N. 3 In a creative process of a-hierarchical association and dissociation between psychological and formal propositions, composed of mixtures and simultaneity, symmetries and synergies with the work of Gina Pane, In this third Action, Maria Federica Maestri suspends the reading of the Sentimental Action and works on the transposition of the Psyche action of 1974, shifting the conceptual focus of the third performance towards a meta-historical reconnaissance of violence: Sentimental Action n. 3 wants to place the sacred iconography of the 'Martyrdom of Saint Agatha' in dramatic concatenation – the saint whose limbs are broken and her breasts torn out – and the re-enactment of the experiments on bone regeneration conducted by Nazi doctors on women – Jewish, lesbians, communist, Jehovah's Witnesses, abortiste, socialist, rom – deported to the Ravensbruck camp. In Action no. 3 the active presence, the performer Valentina Barbarini, interpreter of the director's most significant creations from a very young age, establishes a full correspondence with the different iconographic levels, in an extreme mirroring of one's recent pathological condition, a severe degenerative syndrome (la Sindrome di Ehlers – Danlos, which together with a progressive physical disability entails multiple consequences, such as tissue fragility, atrophic scars, bruising even from minor trauma, ernie, joint dislocations, cardiac-valvular problems, chest deformity, rupture of muscles and tendons) and the image of the interminable torture of Saint Agatha by the Roman proconsul Quinziano, ferocious persecutor of Christians. His frightening martyrdom – flogged, stretched with ropes until her ankles and wrists sprained, subjected to the violent tearing of her breasts with pincers – is represented in numerous classical paintings (Sebastiano del Piombo, Lanfranco, Zurbaran, Tiepolo, Piero della Francesca) and makes Saint Agatha one of the most venerated figures of Christian hagiography. His relics – the skullcap, a femur, a breast, the sacred veil, the feet, the hands – they are preserved in a very precious casket and in a bust chiseled in his image in the Cathedral of Catania. For the compositional stratification it was chosen to re-activate a performative segment of Psyche, the one in which Gina Pane unbuttons her shirt to lick and suck her own breasts, translating it in this third performance into a soothing dynamic, in a need to affectively register one's body, a body, that of Valentina Barbarini, marked by many scars caused by the surgical procedures undergone. The theme of rebellion against social constraints, enunciated with extraordinary poetic force by Gina Pane, it engages in a dual human and aesthetic transposition: while fully recognizing themselves in the new psychophysical identity that metamorphoses into a new expressive perimeter, Barbarini rebels against the pain, he rejects the saving function of the cross and claims for himself the anesthetic justice of morphine. In this third sentimental action, the suffering that the will to dominate of the Roman autoretas inflicted on the Christian dissenters and that was scientifically caused to the victims of the experiments conducted by the Nazis in the concentration camps, he finds no space for immolating self-satisfaction, on the contrary, his testimonial evidence becomes a political act against any past and present violence perpetrated by regimes against people with deformities. Articulation of the s-Partition n. 3 Elements of the third Sentimental Action inspired by Saint Agatha: nice paradox, emotional contact, sentimental pictorial, statics of pain, plastic rooting of the wound. Against the wall is a large mirror in which the spectators are reflected in symmetry with the background figures of Sebastiano del Piombo's pictorial representation. + Azione object standing OVER GINA PANE_SENTIMENTAL ACTION N. 4 Gina Pane's installation rereading of the saints is transmuted, in the iconostasis of Maestri in performative revival, 'Painful way' (title of a work by Gina Pane del 1988) to be explored 'here and now' to reunite through the truth of one's poetic lesions, physical and existential to the aesthetic and political thought of the artist. In a creative process of a-hierarchical association and dissociation between psychological and formal propositions, composed of mixtures and simultaneity, symmetries and synergies with the work of Gina Pane, In this fourth Action, Maria Federica Maestri suspends the reading of the Sentimental Action and works on the transposition of Action II Case no 2 in the ring of 1976, directing the tension of the fourth performance towards a new conflict, that between social presentability and deviant behaviors. The estrangement, isolation, disapproval, the exclusion of the anomalous subject from the regulated socio-cultural system, constitute the driving factors of this Sentimental Action n. 4., which wants to place in dramatic concatenation the sacred iconography of Mary of Egypt - a prostitute becomes a saint after wandering naked in the desert for forty-seven years - and the vision of the artistic act as a praise of imperfection, as a renunciation of the meekness of harmony, as an exaltation of the unruly phenomenon, in absolute coincidence with the 'rebel' aesthetic of Gina Pane. Articulation of the s-Partition n. 4 Elements of the fourth Sentimental Action inspired by Santa Maria Egiziaca: physical disturbance, cognitive contact, sentimental architecture, dynamics of pain, plastic eradication of the loss. A large mirror is placed against the wall in which the spectators are reflected, simple plastic forms of the landscape, as it is represented in the paintings that portray Santa Maria Egiziaca. The cube offers metaphors of spatial reality: the void is confined within its six walls, it is ordered and bent to human measurements as in a unitarian temple where the tools are prepared, the tools used in martyrdom. Mass of gray hair. + Azione object moving Maria Dolores Pesce – Curtain A figurative but at the same time paradoxically 'iconoclastic' show’ (as far as he knows how to dissect figurativity) and deep, articulated figuratively and dramaturgically, capable of distilling beauty from pain and in which the relationship with the inspirer Gina Pane is not celebratory but aesthetically productive of new and necessary artistic truths. Un’esperienza nutriente, straniante, straziante, interrogante (a ben vedere le quattro funzioni dell’arte quando è tale, forse) [..] ci si sente chiamati dentro, molto dentro. Chiamati per nome. Gina Pane, una bellezza dura da inseguire. A Parma, le quattro azioni sentimentali di Lenz Fondazione dedicate all’artista Gina Pane, figura estrema della body art: ce ne parlano Maria Federica Maestri e Francesco Pititto.
Performative iconostasis
Performers in co-creation Monica Barone, Valentina Barbarini, Tiziana Chapel, Carlotta Spaggiari
Visual refractions Francesco Pititto
Interpreter Carlotta Spaggiari
Setup care Giulia Mangini, Alice Scartapacchio
Planning and organizational care Elena Sorbi, Ilaria Stocchi
Communication, Press office Elisa Barbieri
Diffusion, graphic care, training Alessandro Conti
Assistants Mattia Goldin, Anna Zucca
Photographic documentation Elisa Morabito
Production Lenz Foundation
Project created in collaboration with:
Department of Culture of the Municipality of Parma and Solares Foundation of the Arts
Special thanks to Simona Tosini Pizzetti curator of the exhibition
'Contemporary. Masterpieces from private collections in Parma’
The whiteness of Apollonia's dress transfuses onto the new paper table.
Behind, against the wall, is a large mirror the length of the panel in which the spectators are reflected in symmetry with the figures in the background of the miniature.
Destruction of the possibility of chewing.
Mythography of the orifice and visual compensation: the chin bandage is a memory of martyrdom and a simulacrum of perpetual repair of the wound.
+ Sentimental action
+ Rebellion action
+ Slapstick action
+ Self-nourishing action
The cube offers metaphors of spatial reality: the void is confined within its six walls, it is ordered and bent to human measurements as in a unitarian temple where the tools are prepared, the tools used in martyrdom.
Four white plastic bags filled with four colored plastic bricks (with variations) verde, blu, rosso, rosa.
+ Anaphoric action
+ Action in manga mode
+ Exfiltration action
In Sentimental Action n. 3 a short final text will be read by a 'You' present.
Wheelchair, pedestal for the procession.
A golden ostiary is placed on a small glass cube.
The cube offers metaphors of spatial reality: the void is confined within its six walls, it is ordered and bent to human measurements as in a unitarian temple where the tools are prepared, the tools used in martyrdom. Shelf on which the reliquary-memory of Santa'Agata is placed.
A white cloth_sacred veil that envelops the performer.
Head bandage.
White Mary Jane shoes with high heels.
+ Hypertrophic action
+ Action under metahistorical pressure
+ Infiltration action
Corresponding with the different iconographic levels, the active presence, the performer Tiziana Cappella, she becomes the conscious and pathetic protagonist of this clash with social habitus, in a precise mirroring between one's own psycho-physical fragility and the image of Mary of Egypt, a woman with a wild past, penitent and hermit, always engaged in a tiring journey, in search of a poetic state that justifies its existence.
A razor is placed on a small glass cube.
White Mary Jane shoes with low heels.
A white cloth_sacred veil that envelops the performer.
Head bandage.
White Mary Jane shoes with high heels.
+ Dissolving action
+ Action of identification
+ Action enunciation
Michele Pascarella – Gagarin
Giuseppe Distefano – Exibart
