Take a length of raw linen and a natural resin called shellac, then work the cloth by hand from its reverse side until a dove’s wing begins to surface through the weave, and you have the method behind what Santa Gaïa Pilens calls her “contemporary mummies”.
Linen has a long history of wrapping and keeping things safe, which makes the name fitting. Pilens builds her textile murals in layers that hide and transform what lies beneath while holding on to its traces. The shellac fixes the cloth so it keeps the silhouettes and reliefs she shapes by hand, and as the narrative fades on the surface, its outline stays in the fibres. Her sources are very old: Inanna’s descent into the underworld, Salomé’s dance, and folk traditions retold until their corners wore smooth.
Freedom, by Santa Gaïa Pilens
At Art Basel Paris, the gallery ÆQUŌ presented her cycle Dance of Seven Veils, which treats the veil as both a screen and a threshold. Dance works here as a silent force behind the imagery, folding and shaping the cloth. Human and animal bodies merge, hands unfold into wings, and a dove carries the old argument between purity and desire. Pilens layered raw linen and shellac with organic fibres, and gave the cycle seven sets after seeing Tintoretto’s vast mural cycles at the Scuola Grande di San Rocco in Venice...
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Image Credits:
Lead: Enclosed Garden, Air, by Santa Gaïa Pilens.
All further images as credited in captions and courtesy of Aequo Gallery.