Outsiders at The Biennale.

Part of Curatorial project by Cindy Sherman

Ex- Votos from The Santuario di Romituzzo. (16th to 19th century, Poggibonsi, Sienna, Italy)

Several Ex-Votos have been collected during centuries in The chapel of Romituzzo. A Painting of Madonna and The Child that rests on the altar, devotees believe it has a healing power and they offer this Ex-votos as an exchange for healing different body parts and diseases.

Hundreds of this figures have been found, some even full body size. However ordinary people didn't make them. They where commissioned to specialized craftsmen who would assemble them using the papier mâché technique. some of the figures still have some leftovers of the original paint, however the ones displayed at the exhibition where washed out, in bone color. Resembling a cemetery or a common grave, but on the other side it reminded me of little spirits from all those people in pain.

I can imagine how they would put all their hopes and charged this object with such power, as a reflection of themselves, I guess that energy prevails in objects, specially ritualistic ones. So it was definitely very interesting how the curator, managed to put this sort of sacred objects from communities and tribes from different continents right next to works from really famous contemporary artists!, i think that is fantastic!, because art is not always necessarily called art to start with.

Linda Fregni Nagler (1976, Stockholm, Sweden)

 Linda Fregni has been working as a collector, building an archive of more than a thousand images, more specificaly, photographs of babies in the late nineteen century, while they are being held by their hidden-under-a-blanket mother or father.

 The photographic tencniques used at the time such as daguerrotypes, albumen prints or tintypes took a long expossure time, so small children could no stay still. This bizarre and creative way to portrait this kids, becomes scary and ghostly, as this dark figures were death or evil spirits after the child. They where also taken at a time were another genre of photograph was emerging: post mortem photography, in which families would keep a portrait of their dead relative, it was specially done when kids and babies passed away.

 This collection, presented as an archive, keeps you hypnotized, imagining all of the stories behind this photos, seen as this it starts to resemble some weird ritual from the afterlife, while I was looking at it, I just kept thinking, "wow! all of this kids are dead by now!"

Hans Schärer (1927, 1997, Bern, Switzerland)

Schärer left his University studies in Lausanne, Switzerland to pursue a career as an artist, he moved to a villa near Lucerne,and started working in painting, sculpture, tapestry, drawings and prints, however he never intended to get inside the whee of commercial art world and he was satisfied just sharing his works with his family and close friends.

 In the late fifties and until the mid eighties, he worked on images that reflected psychological states of mind, he started to use more basic shapes and patterns. That is how the series Madonnas came to life. he used thick oil paint, mixed with different materials like soil or wax, he also added elements like little rocks or teeth and placed them as amulets in the female bodies.

His figures where obviously feminine but sexless. They have an almost magnetic effect on the viewer with their vibrant colours and textures that resemble ritual body painting and have a god likeness in its presence.