Goia Mujalli
Canticle of the Creatures

Curated by
Brunno Silva

September.17 - December.30.2020

Just around the corner from our last stop, we find the Chiesa della Madonna dell’Addolorata, a 1710 construction that once again fascinates with its beauty and details throughout its facade. Here all our attention is turned to the sculpture – made in leccese stone –  of the Our Lady of Sorrows, recognisable by her main attribute: a dagger piercing her heart. Also often depicted with seven daggers (or knives), the weapons illustrate each of the seven sorrows of the Virgin Mary. 

In the background of the top part of the sculpture, a shell frames the Virgin’s face. The shell has been a common motif since Greek and Roman times. Due to its beautiful proportions and curled shape, shells were attributed to love and beauty and the goddess Aphrodite, an iconography imprinted in popular culture through her Roman counterpart, Venus, in the painting The Birth of Venus by Sandro Botticelli. 

Female imagery is perhaps one of the most debated subjects in art history, its perception has shifted as much as have been registered throughout history. In religious imagery alone, the Virgin and all goddesses that came before her share a large vocabulary of image making, for example in the shell motif that in its connection to femininity and beauty exists across artistic movements and religion. The Virgin Mary herself exists with so many titles, where each accentuates different aspects of her values.

Aphrodite, Goia Mujalli.

In Goia Mujalli’s painting Aphrodite, the only clear reference to femininity and the goddess is in its title alone. The composition unfolds from this cue to a fluid abstraction, here elements seem to flow from one to another, never touching and in constant movement. Part of Mujalli’s practice is built on an interest in the process of erasing and the mark making produced by this process. Perhaps a common denominator whilst considering the natural evolution of the female form and a free connection between the goddess of love and the Virgin Mary.

Another aspect of Mujali’s practice is the presence of embroidery application onto canvas. After creating an abstract composition the artist responds to the spaces within the painting to create free flow of forms. The result is a surface where neither elements overlap each other and rather coexist. Such superposition of different elements is also a constant, and often overlooked, reality in churches such as Madonna dell’Addolorata. For example in the interferences across the church and the change of elements in its columns and altarpieces.

One strong element of this balance between old and new is exemplified by the famous papier-mâché art (cartapesta in Italian) sculptures. Here the expected hard and cold marble sculptures are replaced by light and coloured paper based sculptures of saints across the altar. The technique is largely used and known across the Puglia region. 

Altogether, as much in Mujalli’s work as in the Chiesa della Madonna dell’Addolorata it is possible to notice that very little is immutable and any sense of purity or nonintervention, are rare and often unsuccessfully in translating to viewers what lies beneath the creation of a building or an image. One’s view is enhanced much more by embracing a notion of constant mutability found on markings of erased brushstrokes or a new element given to an altar in order to bring it to the present-day.

The difference of light between my two homes, Goia Mujalli.