 previous |
 index |
 next |
|
by Angela Lorenz
|
||
|
Edition of 45 copies
|
6" x 10" in its case
|
Bologna, Italy 1992
|
| Pandora's Hieroglyphic Primer is
a poem of words and hieroglyphics colored by hand. The text is based on
information from history and mythology concerning prototypes of women
responsible for propagating evil in the world. This work was originally
inspired by images of the snake in the garden of Eden in the Sistine Chapel
and elsewhere, with the torso of a woman. It seemed curious to me that
not only was Eve responsible for the downfall of "man" but the
apple was offered by yet another female figure. Lilith, known under a
variety of names and forms from Sumerian days onward, came well before
her. And it is probably Lilith wrapped around the tree in Eden offering
the apple, as she was supposedly created at the same time as Adam but
refused to obey him and led an independent existence creating mostly monster-children
from stolen semen. With research, I discovered that the number of negatively-depicted
women was enormous, and thus I have limited my representations to a select
few for the time being. Although the choice of subjects may seem lopsided
in that they come mostly from Western culture, there is a reason for it.
The figures from Japan, India, Africa, the Americas and Hawaii that I
researched had dual natures and multi-personalities, with positive as
well as negative aspects. Both respected and feared in a cyclical vision
of life and death, the non-Western mythological female figures do not
seem entirely evil, and to represent them solely as evil would not be
true to their more complex natures. The Western figures found in Classical
and Biblical sources are largely good or evil, reflecting a linear vision
of life followed by death, with perhaps heaven but no afterlife. They
seem, however, to be modeled on earlier archetypes which were cyclical
and not wholly evil.
Pandora was familiar to me from childhood as the Greek woman who opened the box, letting evil into the world. So it seemed appropriate that Pandora's box be the idea behind the project, which led me to the concept of the sewing basket. It is ironic that a female figure let evil out of a box, yet her descendents have been confined to it. Representations of and restrictions on women limited their choices at times, but with limitations people often become even more resourceful. With that idea in mind, I restricted myself to the materials available in a woman's work box. Some women, from ancient Greece onward, were able to sculpt in marble and paint oils, but most were not. They were largely restricted to their homes and to the so-called "minor arts," which were executed alone or with groups of women in seminaries and community gatherings. Within the confines of their sewing boxes they composed embroidered rhymes and imaginative designs that endure. Silkscreened on cotton cloth in Century Schoolhouse at Edizioni Grafiche Il Navile and cut by the artist with pinking shears. |
||