The painting series Xénai is a project about "strangers" and the possibility to find affinities with them. Moving from classic literary feminine figures marked as “foreigners”, I’m trying to elude any cliché, highlighting elements that can bring them closer. It's also a series about the status of women through History, about victim complex and truly being a victim, and about Beauty.
Every single figure has a vast literature I related to, but every painting has for me a stronger connection with a specific text. A quotation from that text is handwritten on a little paper strip glued on the canvas.
Kassandra. Turkey, oil on canvas 50×30, 2015
Kassandra is a double foreigner: as a Trojan for the Greeks and among her own folk because of her prophecies and Apollo’s curse (as an act of revenge for refusing his sexual offers) these never to be believed. I wanted to catch the moment when she gets Apollo’s gift of foresight, longing for it and still afraid of its consequences. On the paper strip glued onto the canvas are her two first lines in Aeschylus’ tragedy Agamemnon: “ototototoi popoi da / opollon opollon”, where 'Opollon' refers to Apollo, though the beginning cannot be translated and sounds more like fearsome stuttering or a lament, and nothing more.
Penthesilea. Kurdistan, oil on canvas 50×30, 2016
Penthesilea was in Greek mithology the Queen of the Amazones, leader of a women’s army, which she led to the Trojan War in an attempt to help King Priamos fighting back the Greeks. There she got killed by a weirdly enamoured Achilles, some sources say perpetrated a necrophil act on her. In 1808 Heinrich von Kleist wrote Penthesilea, a very dicussed play which turns over the events, letting Penthesilea fall in love with Achilles, though finally killing him. On the paper strip glued onto the canvas is her first line in the play: “Nichts vom Triumph mir! Nichts vom Rosenfeste!” - “None of Triumph to me! None of Roses’ Feasts!”, the Roses’ Feast being meant for winning a man in fight.
As for the reference in the title, it's an homage to Kurdish female fighters.
Medea. Stateless, oil on canvas 50x30, 2016
The highlights of Medea’s story are more or less well-known: halfgod and sorceress, wife of hero Jason, whom she helped retrieving the Golden Fleece, fleeing then with him to Greece. In Euripides’s play there Jason leaves Medea for the daughter of Creon King of Corinth, and she avenges her husband’s betrayal by killing their own two children - and the young bride, of course.
I see Medea as the depiction of a very intelligent and cultured woman possessing a vast knowledge. This, to my eye, truly causes her being feared and rejected everywhere from everyone, first of all by those men who are not able to confront themselves to her as well as to stand her ground.
The quotation on the paper strip glued onto the canvas is from Lunga notte di Medea (Medea’s long night), a tragedy by Corrado Alvaro premiered in 1949. In her first line Medea says to one of her young handmaids “Hai rughe tu? Diggià?” (“So you should have wrinkles? Already?”). I liked very much the self-irony and the self-criticism of Alvaro’s figure, as well as the explanation he gives for Medea’s infanticide.
