::Medusas, multiplying female roles, multiplying sea creatures::
(work in progress)
eng:
“
"Medusas" is a show in two parts. The first section is a series of portraits of women. The second section is an installation of Medusa, the jellyfish, a sea creature often associated with feminity at its most exacerbating.
Part 1 : Eight series of triptychs - portraits of eight women caught in classical psychological expressions. Fear, ecstasy, suffering, contentment etc. Diana Lui chooses her models from different countries (France, China, Malaysia etc.) to show how in different cultures women reveal themselves. Beneath each woman's portrait is a banal word used in daily life everywhere that denotes her status which in this context is both evocative and scathing: Bitch, Mother, Housewife, Career Woman, Prostitute, Over Sensitive, etc. Whether these words correspond to a social reality, to a male phantasm or to an image adopted by women themselves, these names reflect the manifold roles that women assume in the course of their lives.
Part 2 : White medusas overrun the ceiling. Their long tentacles brush the spectators, bringing to mind their infinite power of reproduction and their invasive progress. At the same time, these supple and nonchalant forms are full of grace and seduction compared to the aggravating emotions aroused in the adjacent room. In her installation, Diana Lui plays visually on the ambiguity of "attraction and repulsion", an ambiguity entrenched in the myth of Woman in almost all societies through the ages. To overcome the difficulty of exisiting in an unconvivial environment, Woman and Medusa react alike... they expose themselves and they multiply. For that, Woman like the Medusa does not escape an oppressive image of herself. At the same time, their modes of existence are the guarantee of the world to come which never ceases to transform itself and to multiply, a manner that could not be more reassuring. « Medusas » reminds us that we belong to this world and that our actions contribute to the transformations of the planet and of Humanity itself.”
- Bérénice Angremy, independent art critic, curator and director of Thinking Hands Art Consultancy, Beijing, China