This work was shown in a group show Freelance Foundation in London. More details here:
https://freelandsfoundation.co.uk/exhibition/aggregate-2022
This sculptural work consists of welded aluminum panels welded by me and lights with specific gels. I used a lazer cutter to cut drawings out of it.
The work is based on the text De Mulieribus Claris (c.1374) translated to "Concerning Famous Women", a collection of biographies of historical and mythological women by Giovanni Boccaccio, understood to be the first example of a group of stories devoted exclusively to women in western literature, and the subject
of my extensive research. I worked with the original book which is part of Edinburgh University's Rare Book Collection.
I was drawn initially to Boccaccio's Decameron as it was written during the Black Death. In this new sculptural work, aluminium panels are plasma cut with motifs, including hands, flowers, insects and abstract patterns, extracted from the book’s wood cut illustrations.
De Mulieribus Claris memorialises the lives of women through the male perspective of the author. For me, this conscious edited selection and interpretation of non-gendered imagery responds to Boccaccio's blueprint and invokes the implicit violence of this narrative six hundred years on.
It was my intention to mark this occasion with a work engaging with the global conversation around Gender Based Violence towards women, trans and non binary people.
