Aspettando L’Annunciazione
The series, titled Aspettando L’Annunciazione (Waiting for the Annuciation), imagines a set of religious iconography using ideas borrowed from the Italian Renaissance and commenting upon the Year 2012 Mayan prophecies, currently part of the popular imagination. Combining surreal beliefs about the apocalypse of the “feminine earth” with equally enigmatic images of the Mother Mary of Italian origin, I rediscover in images the root meaning of the word (apocalypse) as the uncovering. In this body of work, the Nature Spirits dance with the Saints and Pachamama, the jungle name for the Earth Mother, who appears as a divine entity. She is warning us, warming us, offering redemption, proferring enchantment.
The work was created while in residence at three art colonies in northern Italy, Rome and Central America. The imagery in the collages was collected while traveling, comprised of my own photography, found photographs and prints from books and other print sources. (The works are the size of large books). Transparent layers of antique pigments from 19thC Northern Italy are painted over the printed collage images. The powdered pigments are mixed with egg yolks, providing an organic connection with the animals and places where I have worked. The egg tempera on the digital photographs forms a waxy, delicate skin.
Lynda Frese, October 2009