We keep unearthing the work of feminist (or simply women) “artivites”. Here is the one, developed [we should normally write “that one, developed…”: I don’t dare here and leave you to decide…] in the New York of the 1990s and early 2000s, by Fiorenza Menini (born in 1970).
« A disorienting score composed of marches, happenings, performances, texts, photographs and videos "testifying to" his exploration of the limits in a process of metamorphoses of the self and "deconstruction of representations 1".
In the series Roof (1994), she is seen "questioning the masquerade of femininity 2" in a leopard-print coat, fur hat, dark glasses and high heels, armed with a bouquet of red roses on the rooftops of New York. How to break free from one's chains? She deconstructs, diffracts her image, subverts uses, disorients. […]. » This is about “ to recompose my own body “,” explains the fearless artist who dares to confront taboos and clichés with a beautiful, and sometimes cruel, insolence. With her, glamour hits the mark and humor (often dark) grates with gravity. This is evidenced by the ailing body depicted in *La Coquelucheuse*, the parody of the murder in the bathroom in *How Al Pacino Killed Me*, or the parody of an overly ordered *Breakfast*: a violence lurks everywhere beneath the humor…
A TRASH GLAMOUR
From « From the film starlet on a rooftop pedestal to the naked housewife curled up against a washing machine, straddling a television or frozen in a refrigerator, the artist skillfully subverts the conventions of representation, erasing "the ridiculous absurdity of our existences." 2. From the " a woman with glossy magazine femininity literally frozen in her refrigerator, whose lamp serves as her spotlight "(Mrs Freeze and the Frozen Values) to The Short Life of Mary Smith played in fast motion in a fitting room, it shows "women trapped by representations that alienate them 3".
Rooftops, underground spaces, squats, kitchens and bathrooms, dead angles, abandoned spaces, corridors, seedy hotels… these are the back roads Fiorenza Menini takes to discreetly enter the unsettling intimacy of her subjects and experiment. For her, experimenting often means transforming herself to break the rules and relinquish control before reclaiming the frame and its image. Thus, in Mascarade, among other photographic performances, “ The jewelry distorts the face into an amalgam of flesh and metal, giving it a cyborg-like appearance, while the fur coats […] sometimes exhibit the superficiality they so often embody […], and sometimes liberate the body from its form, restoring its animal strength. 3”.
An expressive and theatrical force that can be found in his video Atomic Landscapes, created from photo notebooks.
1 Quotes from the exhibition curator, Céline Mélissent.
2 Frédérique Villemur in the exhibition catalogue.
3 Claire Lozier in the exhibition catalogue.
“WALK MAN WALK LIKE A WOMAN” DOUBLE EXPOSURE
FRAC OCCITANIE – 4, RUE RAMBAUD, MONTPELLIER
FROM JUNE 2 TO OCTOBER 21, 2023
FRAC-OM.ORG
FIORENZA-MENINI.COM
THE KIASMA
1, RUE DE LA CROUZETTE, CASTELNAU-LE-LEZ
FROM JUNE 1ST TO JULY 13TH, 2023
LEKIASMA.FR
