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| WOMEN OF JERUSALEM @ christophe canato |
This
photographic series coincides with Christophe Canato’s early 2011 work in
progress. It has been finalised for the yearly collective exhibition The
Station Of The Cross achieved by Curator Catherine
Czerw in 2012, Perth
Western Australia.
In his
first research, Canato’s work in progress was about the women of his life. He
was raised in a matriarcal family environment with a dominant Italian
grandmother, a severe feminist mother and politically engaged, a loving but
independant big sister eleven years older and a close and protective aunt in a
fusional relationship. These powerful women were the fairies who bent over his
cradle bequeathing power and fears, responsible for his orientations,
engagements and regrets.
Motivated
by this context, Canato realized a photographic series of intimate segnor white
hair women dressed in white camisole. These bright evanescent photographs wobble
between serenity versus opressiveness, purity versus degeneration, death versus
angelic, beauty versus repulsion.
With his
desire to represent the station number eight from the Station of the Cross,
Canato finds the perfect match with this previous work and a resonance in the
religious text.
“…
For
behold, the days are coming when they will say, ‘Blessed are the barren, and
the wombs that never bore, and the breasts that never gave suck!’ Then they
will begin to say to the mountains, ‘Fall on us’; and to the hills, ‘Cover us’.
For if they do this when the wood is green, what will happen when it is dry?” *
Women of Jerusalem is an allegience of Canato’s women of life and
more largely, a dedication of all women with their tolls in religion, their
cultural tributes and their social responsibilities.
* Extract from the station of The Cross. Station number
eight, Women of Jerusalem.
