Installation Penelope (Penelope) graced the space of the former chapel in São Paulo

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

One of the latest works by the Brazilian artist Tatiana Blass, installation Penelope (Penelope), sends viewers to the mythical story of an ancient hero and his devoted wife. Penelope cunningly rejected cunning suitors while her husband, long considered dead, was on a dangerous journey.

According to Homer's Odyssey, Penelope, the faithful wife of the mythical hero Odysseus, rightly hoped that he would return home unharmed after years of wandering. Numerous suitors who overpowered her (according to Homer, she had 108), demanded an answer. Not wanting to give in, the woman decided on a trick. Announcing that she would choose a groom for herself, as soon as she finished weaving the shroud to her father-in-law Laertes of Ithachi, Penelope every night, for three years, dismissed the woven in the hope of delaying the inevitable choice.

The mythical plot has inspired many contemporary authors to create their own creations. So, in 1954, Rolf Lieberman wrote the opera "Penelope", and Margaret Atwood created the feminist novel "Penelopiada" in 2005. The installation with the same name is also created by two American artists - Anna Fulmine and Victoria Shahrokh, working in tandem. The chaotically stretched cuts of canvas, which were used for the installation of the American woman, are an allusion to the shroud for Laertes.

The Penelope composition was specially prepared by the artist for the exhibition at the Chapel of Morumbi in São Paulo. Inside the chapel, which, however, has long ceased to carry its direct functions, Blass placed a loom, from which scarlet threads stretch. The finished canvas spreads across the floor like a red carpet. The artist's composition is not limited by the space of the former chapel - red threads cunningly penetrate into the courtyard through special holes in the walls, entangling bushes and trees growing nearby.

Blass was born in 1979 in Sao Paulo. After earning her BA in Fine Arts from the Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP), Tatiana began her career as a professional artist, but never limited herself to painting. She is engaged in installations, creates sculptures, photographs. The artist calls theater her new passion. Blass exhibitions are successfully held both in the artist's native Brazil and abroad. Tatiana Blass currently lives and works in Sao Paulo.