Patchworked Metaphors of the Feminine
The Atlanta Journa-Constitution; Fri. Jun. 1, 2001 VISUAL ARTS
"Patchworked Metaphors of the Feminine", by Jerry Cullum
The work of the two Atlanta artists in "Patchworked Females" is literally patched or stitched together. Both Mariana Depetris and Lisa Shinault intend this as a metaphor for the difficulties of growing up female, but otherwise they diverge dramatically.
Depetris, orginally from Argentina, presents a distinctly Latina perspective in her mixed-media prints, and assemblage of significant photographic details and personal symbols. "My Insect Collection," for example, links a small girl to various flies and spiders. This suggests an overarching symbolism; insects occur in several other prints as well, along with appropriated text in Spanish with an oblique relation to the imagery.
Depetris also offers an installation of handmade letter blocks, each incorporationg prints painstakingly bonded to the block's surface. The blocks spell out a text (in English this time) regarding the way in which a child's direct relationship to animals and the natural world is gradually replaced by a distant, rational approach. Depetris repeats this text in a memorable print, clearly considering it important. But to understand her whole approach would require patient study of her exceptionally attractive works.
On a parallel track, Shinault develops the theme if impaired feminity established in her earlier "Difficult Women" series.
One of the dress drawings in her "Paper Dolls" series contains such scraps of newspaper text as "sound serious" and "lobotomy," suggesting dicontented disempowerment. It's harder to explain the map of the Marshall Islands.
Shinault's imagery works in ways just short of surrealist. Some of her women have no arms, a Venus de Milo reference from her earlier work. Although two ballerinas have all their appendages, each wears duck-headed glove puppets that make action impossible. In other pieces, ducks have the heads of young women or are burdens to be carried. The theme of sleep occurs in such works as "the Night," a painting of a dreaming, one-armed woman hanging from a beam on which an owl sits.
Shinault's strange symbolism seems to be an obscure meditaion on foolishness and helplessness. Depetris is up to something more complicated regarding family heritage and education. Both of them are troubled by women's place in the world.
It may be symptomatic of that place that this show will be disrupted this weekend by the gallery's inventory reduction sale, but will be on view again as of Tuesday.
The verdict: Mariana Depetis everges as an exciting new artist; Lisa shinault remains deliberately difficult.
