Marina Sagona
Elena del Drago – from La Stampa, October 24, 2016
For her solo show in
Rome, Marina Sagona extends a series of reflections begun months ago in her New
York show. There, Sagona chose to put faces onto the Dantesque female universe,
which, however famed and celebrated it may be, lacks a well defined
iconography. “I chose this theme,” says Sagona, who has lived in New York for
many years, “because it offered me absolute freedom, precisely due to the lack
of pre-existing imagery. I was also interested in understanding where these
women would be today. Dido doesn’t honor her husband’s memory enough, and for
this she’s sent to Inferno? It felt so unjust! Dante may well have had the
right to be a misogynist in the 1300s, but it was from this premise that the
reversal at the core of this show was born.”
Indeed, in the Nuova
Pesa show space, a legendary gallery on the Rome art scene, a series of
portraits of unspecified females greets us: pastels of whites and blacks, or
whites and blues in which faces are hinted at. The reversal of roles begins,
the posthumous vindication exacted by the artist who finally chooses to place
the countless Beatrices in Inferno, with their innocence and unpreparedness,
while the Harpies go straight to Paradiso.
This show represents
a deepening of Sagona’s inquiry into the female image in both private and
public spheres that she has been carrying for some time. In her Palermo show, Punti
Fermi, she chose to represent women who had played important roles in her
life. “From my mother to Natalia Ginzburg, from my grandmother to numerous
fictional heroines, I portrayed real and imaginary women who had left a mark on
me.” An inquiry into the self that the artist acknowledges: “There’s a clear
autobiographical intent in all my work on the female, triggered, no less, by
the birth of my daughter and the desire to scrutinize my relationship with the
most important ‘woman’ in my life.” The choice to abandon her successful career
as an illustrator and to embark on more personal work is also connected to the
birth of Sagona’s daughter. “I went to New York twenty-one years ago and I started
doing illustrations for the New York Times, the New Yorker, and
Italian papers like La Stampa. At the same time, though, I was working
more intimate pieces. I had to stop after my daughter was born and, in her
early years, had some health issues. I was somehow obliged—it was very
traumatic at the time—to concentrate on projects that were slower to come to
fruition, that came from a deeper source.”
Women are the
protagonists, though not in a overdetermined way, even in the conclusive and
exhibitory phase of the show: an Eden of gilded objects, among them a PC,
gloves, a mobile phone, an apple, and even a plate of pasta. Amidst all of
these objects are portraits of female figures with their heads covered in
black. A Paradiso in reverse where, despite the gilded mantle that covers
everything, there is no imagery of happiness.
“Eden came out of my
reflections on women. I finally came to the idea of a world turned upside-down,
an ‘earthly paradox’ instead of an ‘earthly paradise’: everything is there, and
it all seems nearly normal, but there is something missing. I worked with found
objects that I’ve been collecting for years, often from flea markets. I
contemplated them and recomposed them. They are objects that attracted me for a
variety of reasons, which I then recomposed and assembled. So, they’re made of
iron, ceramic, wood, but they’re all covered in gold, and, like a Midas’ touch,
it creates a sense of opulence. But in the midst of all this wealth, the
impression of a great sadness remains.”
In this investigation
into the female one cannot avoid thinking of the great artist-shamans who, with
different instruments, have conducted similar inquiries, beginning with the
great Louise Bourgeois, an artist whom, not coincidentally, Sagona ruminates on
often.
“Louise Bourgeois
disturbed me profoundly with her works on mothers and fathers; she quite simply
revolutionized art. Her figures, and her truncated bodies, really effected me.
I’d go so far as to say they pursued me, they wouldn’t leave me in peace. After
one of her shows I had a dream that, unfortunately, I can’t manage to forget!”
Bourgeois’ discourse on the female is direct and
terribly profound. It is fascinating no less for the complete absence of
feminist ideology. Apropos of feminism, Marina Sagona cites another looming
female presence in the world of art. “I find myself agreeing with Marina
Abramovic. When they told her that feminists would be opposed to her choice to
undergo breast surgery, she replied something like, ‘I am not a feminist, I am only
an artist.’ We’re thankful, naturally, to feminists for having given us the
possibility and the luxury of not having to be feminists anymore.”
(Translation by Michael Reynolds)