Strength

Strength appeared to the artist when she decided to write the proposal for this exhibition and needed to find a way to recognise and sustain her own place. After the plunge into The Moon, she stands before what was found within: it must be held and, at the same time, allowed to open. In the work, this experience takes shape in a body supported on tiptoe while gently holding open a shell that contains a pearl.

The body reproduces the shape of the shell and the pearl: it curves around them, as though creating, through the gesture itself, the space needed for what it holds to remain open. The face turns towards the shell, attentive to what it contains. Maintaining this position requires balance and effort; opening a shell also requires strength, but a precise strength, capable of acting without breaking what it seeks to reveal.

As in a dancer’s body, whose apparent lightness conceals the intensity of the effort that makes it possible, strength here manifests itself precisely in what is almost unseen.