Crowned Moon

Ceramic glazed, chenille, cotton, cotton bedsheet 230x200 cm
Installation view at CAR Gallery Bologna, 2024
Photo
Giorgio Benni; Manuel Montesano

The exhibition project emphasizes the monstrous, seductive, and repulsive dimension, the magical qualities, and the diabolical characteristics with which women have been represented throughout history, mythology, and literature, up to the present day.
The wild aspects, sexual freedom, and the ability to generate life and death seem to be elements that must be controlled and contained. The project studies the iconography of the monstrous feminine and challenges the view of an empathetic, passive, and submissive femininity, inviting reflection on how historical developments have influenced contemporary norms and the restrictive gender roles historically imposed on women.

Crowned Moon

“I am the moon” an assertion taken from Alejandro Jodorowsky’s book The Master and the Magicians, uttered by the artist Leonora Carrington during their last encounter, emphasizes the symbolism of the moon in the feminine sphere. In the book, the director describes revealing encounters with witches, artists, shamans, who have changed his life. This assertion evokes the connection between femininity and lunar cyclicality, with connections related to mystery and fertility. A symbolism rooted in antiquity, where lunar cycles were correlated with menstrual cycles and the fertility of the earth according to the farmer’s almanac, and influenced popular beliefs and practices related
to sowing, pruning, and even pregnancy. This image linked to the feminine sphere hides something dark, magical, and pagan, passed down orally. The moon symbolizes that dark dimension represented also by the image of the woman who both frightens and fascinates, attracts and repels.
Crowned Moon merges lunar symbolism with the image of the Harpies, hybrid creatures half-woman and half- bird associated with the monstrous feminine. The crowned harpy is a bird of prey with erectile feathers on its head forming a crown. Some of the works on display rework the figure of this animal along with mythological representations associated with the Harpy, which see a figure half- woman and half-bird.
The association of the female figure with the monstrous is very broad and often includes figures endowed with supernatural powers and threatening hybrid characteristics, both human and non-human, such as the Furies, the Gorgons, the Empusae, and the Striges, from which the name “strega” (witch) originates. They were inhabitants of the threshold between earth and abysses, and inhabitants of the abysses like Scylla, Charybdis, or hidden in distant boundaries and mysterious lands, deities, witches, and sorceresses like Lilith, Medusa, Circe, and the Sphinx.
The representation of women as monstrous or potentially dangerous is a broad theme that runs through history and culture. Jude Ellison Sady Doyle explores this theme in depth in the book The Monstrous Feminine highlighting how the female figure has often been associated with monstrous characteristics in cinema, literature, and mythology. This representation has profoundly shaped the perception of women in society, influencing power dynamics and gender relations. In antiquity, women were venerated as mother goddess.
When God Was a Woman (2011) by Merlin Stone tells the story of the Goddess who reigned supreme between the Mediterranean and the Middle East, venerated as a wise creator and source of cosmic order, and not only as a symbol of fertility and beauty. The author documents the long phase of the contrasting transition from matriarchal to patriarchal cults, culminating in the degradation of the Goddess to a weak and depraved creature, as one of the most widespread legends of Adam and Eve tells. This text has influenced generations of women, prompting them to rethink their spirituality and their role in modern society. The figure of the woman venerated by matriarchal cults gradually changes and reaches the peak of the monstrosity and submission of the feminine dimension with the witch hunts. This phenomenon led to the justified killing of forty to sixty thousand women from the fourteenth to the seventeenth century and still remains relevant in Africa, with witch camps in Ghana, as well as in India and Latin America. These phenomena highlight the importance of continuing to explore and challenge the stereotypical representations of women, in order to promote a more equitable and inclusive vision of femininity in contemporary society.