The work of the multidisciplinary artist Monica Mura is transgressive, critical, and captivating, going beyond the obvious and the immediate. We have worked together before, and it has been very inspiring to accompany her journey, her growth, and the way she transcends herself. The theme of image in her work is undoubtedly a major challenge in contemporary society. Monica approaches image from various perspectives: the role of women, the dictatorship of images, and aging. Guy Debord, the creator of the concept of «society of the spectacle,» defined spectacle as the sum of social relations mediated by images. In contemporary society, there is an excessive concern with beauty and its aesthetic standards.
Many of these concerns arise primarily from the role of the press, which uses advertising to instruct consumers in the compulsive use of everything related to appearance. The «dictatorship of beauty» is the clearest example of the overvaluation of the body in contemporary society. The concept of beauty becomes a collective standard, with the «label» of what it is to be beautiful—generic for all, but not individual as it should be treated. Every year, new ways to achieve the ideal body are invented: silicone, botox, liposuction, and perhaps the worst so far, anabolic steroids, extremely harmful to health. The pursuit of the ideal appearance has become worrying, affecting increasingly younger people and creating artificially smooth and expressionless faces or breasts completely outside the natural pattern. Through her performances, Monica analyzes the transformations of the body, seeking to involve the audience in this observation and analysis, which is profound, disturbing, and highly critical. After all, art can be powerfully transformative and take us out of our comfort zones.
Monica’s artistic work also addresses the challenges of aging, another urgent reflection to make today. The performance «Before and After» is unsettling and tells the story of all of us. Distressing on one hand, beautiful on the other, because the different stages of life have infinite beauty and mystery. Monica also brings us to another current concern: the creation of new words to describe the phenomenon of aging, such as «better age» and «old age,» which only obscure the subject’s real relationship with their body and its pathos. Integrating the stories of each human being constitutes the social memory of a country. As Brazilian educator Paulo Freire said, «The memories of myself helped me understand the plots I was part of.» By denying the past, we deny history and overvalue the ephemeral.
Simone de Beauvoir, in her book La Vieillesse (Old Age), refers to this «as a biological phenomenon with deep effects on the human psyche.» Old age must be understood in its entirety, not only in its biological aspect. Aging is complex, dynamic, and idiosyncratic, so not all individuals age the same way.
We have never lived this long before. At the same time, we have never tried to hide our fear of aging so much. We deny old age and create a culture of youth. Yet both young and old can reconnect and feel the same longing experienced in life, yearning for the bodily and spiritual parts that die over time. They can recover these parts through the symbolism of loss, reinvent new ways of being, seeing, and feeling the world, and relaunch and create «places» that are less barren and more fertile.
As the poet Mário Quintana said: «Time is a point of view. Old is the one who is a day older than others… There are only two ages: alive or dead.»