A newcomer to the world of Zsuzsanna Ardo could easily get lost in her job description – by turns writer and editor, artist and curator, her biography reads like a litany of creative prolificacy.
The exhibition attempts an ironic look at Maltese Marian culture, though how much of that is actually intended or simply a foil to showcase Ardo’s abstract photographs is debatable- Peter Farrugia
Ardo describes herself as “Hungarian by birth, European by existence, human by inclination, humorous by nature” and the sheer breadth of her oeuvre is as impressive as the venues that have hosted her work.
She’s exhibited at the Frankfurter Kunstverein and Centre Pompidou, had play premieres at Harvard, is a member of the British Film Academy and accepted invitations to conferences in Iran, the US and across Asia.
She may very well be a modern day Renaissance woman, but this review shall focus on her latest exhibition here in Malta. Currently showing at St James Cavalier, Valletta, entitled ‘Adoration of Mary’, visitors are immediately greeted by a large plaque that tells us all the nice things other newspapers and journals have said about her work.
The sequence of images sets out to present “a visual meditation on woman and shadow”, recounting Mary’s Maltese story with photographs shot in a Maltese environment (with an American model) and capturing the “primal aura of the local setting”, the dignity of anonymity.
I couldn’t help but wonder if the exhibition wouldn’t have been more entirely itself without the splashes of text from Ardo’s writings, foreign and local news outlets, and translations from Frigyes Karinthy (the Hungarian poet who first proposed “six degrees of separation” between every human being on the planet), a series of quotes and excerpts all dotted around the space. They certainly introduced another layer to the exhibition but some elements were problematic.
For example, in her essay Virgin Birth and Red Underpants, Ardo’s treatment of the noun alma, ‘maiden’ (set up in opposition to bethulah, ‘virgin’) is so glib that while it might qualify as entertainment, I doubt it would pass muster in an undergraduate classical Hebrew class.
Rather than get embroiled in the mess, and I don’t feel as comfortable as Ardo does in offering a blanket interpretation, while ‘alma’ does occasionally refer to a young married woman it is almost universally applied in the Bible to an unmarried girl. The idea that unmarried girls should be virgins might appear shocking to modern sensibilities, but it was par for the course in merry old Palestine.
Now perhaps it isn’t fair to expect a background in Biblical Hebrew from a photographer, but when somebody takes it upon themselves to interpret a text (no matter how commodified and relativised, and how intimate a response it provokes) they should expect to be taken to task for presenting one isolated strand of the scholarly conversation without qualification.
It is the artist’s prerogative to recreate the world as she sees fit, but a world which doesn’t pay attention to both sides of an argument isn’t one I’d be prepared to live in for long.
We’re on firmer ground with the photographs, and the artist obviously knows her way around a shot. In discussing the pictures, she explains that a “narrative element” was necessary in order to lead people to her primary interest, abstraction.
These abstract views of the Maltese landscape (and cityscape) are both visually arresting and provocative for their complex beauty. Ardo has a gracious eye and candid enjoyment of forms, moving in and out of light, off-set by an elegant monochrome.
The exhibition attempts an ironic look at Maltese Marian culture, though how much of that is actually intended or simply a foil to showcase Ardo’s abstract photographs is debatable.
In replicating headlines (in the style of Malta Star’s “The Virgin Mary is upset that Malta is considering divorce”) the exhibition luxuriates in its own absurdity. While walking through the gallery, waiters served both Bloody and Virgin Mary cocktails, and in one little niche a small, kitsch statue of the Madonna was balanced in an empty glass.
Where visitors to the gallery will find themselves after experiencing Ardo’s ‘Adoration of Mary’ is a fascinating question, one I hope they’ll ask themselves.
What kind of impact the exhibition will have on local artists, either entering into dialogue with the work, admiring it from a distance or walking away indifferent to its charms, is equally interesting. I found myself drawn to a single image over and over again, a mysterious photograph of a baroque pediment engulfed in a sea of leaves and afternoon light.
Where that puts me in relation to the exhibition is difficult to say, however I must admit the Bloody Mary was excellent.