Performance as a tool for transformation. Citizen participation as a means to value, make visible, recover, and rescue from oblivion. Memory as a ductile material to generate new bonds. And artistic language to deconstruct the codes of patriarchy.
Monica Mura (Cagliari, 1979) always touches a sensitive nerve with her works. As aesthetic as they are profound, every element in them is a symbol, every object a metaphor. Through an autobiographical narrative, Mura always moves us in common places, where personal memories become universal, where her roots blend with those of all the people who, in some way, ‘have contributed to being’. Polyhedric and versatile, the artist addresses different themes from a multidisciplinary perspective, where video, sound, photography, sculpture, installation, and drawing are presented as scenarios for reflection and interaction with the public, in a contextual dialectic with space (physical, social, and historical).
Gathering tradition, from technique to concept, becomes the protagonist in a delicate, precise, and incisive body of work. Mura weaves and sutures with gold threads (a leitmotif in her work, a symbol of resilience) each layer of intangible heritage, reconstructing a story where women were overlooked, granting them the place that belonged (and belongs) to them by right. Thus, her work recovers and investigates, empowers and situates, as a sort of trial of patriarchy, proudly showing diversity and deconstructing preconceived gender patterns and roles, to place the public before a constant questioning of their (our) identity.
In this way, we can read in her work a multitude of references, typical of a restless and curious artist with a permanent research effort. Many contemporary female creators have left a mark on Monica Mura’s work: the work with her own body and the passage of time by Esther Ferrer, the memory of lived objects in Carmen Calvo’s work, the multiple and changing identities presented by Marina Núñez, the darkness of trauma and the wound, as well as the suture in Louise Bourgeois’ work, the updating of tradition by Joana Vasconcelos, the overwhelming force of Maruja Mallo’s women, the subversive performance in public space by Itziar Okariz, or the psychological actions of Marina Abramovic. These are just a few of the many references that Monica Mura reflects in her practice. Women. So many (great) women. But her work also draws from art history, from the great Renaissance and Baroque of her native Italy, as well as from popular culture, which aggrandizes legends and gathers that wisdom passed down from generation to generation.
Thus, her works are a support for that which cannot be lost and for those who had no voice. Everything, from the tiny to the immense, that deserves to transcend.