The Fondation Carmignac is presenting The lnfinite Woman exhibition at Villa Carmignac, on the island of Porquerolles off the coast of Hyères (Var), curated by Alona Pardo.
Strong, lustful, fatal, loving, demonic, tempting or mythical, women have been represented in many ways over the centuries, often in response to a patriarchal vision of the world. Exploring identity, sexuality, pleasure and power, The lnfinite Woman sheds light on the ways in which women have been viewed from the earliest myths to the most contemporary and subversive representations. Here, art liberates women’s bodies from Western beauty canons, offering reinvented models that challenge not only social norms, but also the limits of art itself as well as its oppressive categories.
Organised thematically, the exhibition draws on ideas of myths and monsters in the representation of women to reflect on womanhood in all its many guises. Moving surefootedly between images of goddesses to scrutinizing the idea of the femme fatale, from disruptive ideas of motherhood to paying homage to the power of women’s desire, from beguiling fairytale creatures to cyborgs highlighting their emancipatory potential, to elevating (dis) obedient bodies that upend Western conventions of beauty while reflecting on the body as vessel, the exhibition closes with a section devoted to sirens and anti-icons to explore how gender is shape shifting in the 21st century. Ultimately, the works in the exhibition disrupt conventional ideas of womanhood to reflect on feminine power and how the representation of women has shaped global cultural attitudes.
Visitors to the exhibition are invited to take a thematic tour of over eighty works, and to encounter female figures that are as familiar as they are unsettling: sacred and nurturing women (Sandro Botticelli, Mary Beth Edelson, Loie Hollowell), free-spirited sirens (Kiki Smith, Chris Ofili, Sofia Mitsola), spider-women (Louise Bourgeois, Frida Orupabo), enhanced cyborgs (Lee Bul, Vivian Greven, Tishan Hsu), and objects of desire (Roy Lichtenstein, Pablo Picasso, Thomas Ruff).
Bringing together over sixty artists from different historical periods, geopolitical spaces and aesthetic currents – and with plural gender identities, the exhibition offers a dialogue between contemporaries such as Wangechi Mutu, Lisa Yuskavage and Michael Armitage and major historical artists including Louise Bourgeois, Egon Schiele and Judy Chicago. Using techniques as varied as painting, drawing, photography, video, collage, sculpture, ceramics and textiles, the artists conjure up new fantasies and give life to new female narratives, imbued with power (ORLAN, Martine Guttierez, Zanele Muholi) and pleasure (Laure Provost, Betty Tompkins, Dorothy Iannone, John Currin).
Just as a stay on an island can transform our relationship with the world and with reality, The Infinite Woman exhibition at Villa Carmignac offers an artistic and interpersonal journey, an invitation to redefine norms and areas of expression, all conceived as a poetic and uninhibited celebration of the elusive multiplicity of the feminine.
Press release from the Fondation Carmignac
Image: Mary Beth Edelson. Selected Wall Collages. 1972-2011. Off-set and laser prints, marker, graphite, correction pen, wax crayon, and glitter on paper, mounted on canvas, dimensions variable. Tate: Purchased using funds provided by the 2017 Frieze Tate Fund supported by WME | IMG 2018. Photography © Tate. Image courtesy of David Lewis Gallery, New York
