Herstory

Maja Arte Contemporanea is delighted to celebrate its tenth anniversary with a double solo exhibition entitled Herstory, showcasing works by artists Ilaria Sagaria (Italy 1989) and Agata Stępień (Poland 1986).

Sagaria and Stępień were awarded the residency “A Residency of One’s Own“, granted in collaboration with Roman art collectors Umberto Morera and Anna Maria Balsano Morera, in 2023 and 2022 respectively.

Ilaria Sagaria is displaying her series of photographs “Full of Grace“. Among mythology, art and photography, the author looks into a complex and stratified imaginary, dull of cultural symbols, references and artistic details and echoes of the psyche, exploring the multifaceted universe of the feminine. Her images tell of mythological tales, ancestral rhythms, and of the carnality of bodies uncovering before our eyes. They portray gestures charged with meaning. Condemned to grace, emblem of the irreconcilability between the idealized and the earthly vision, the female body shows in these images its duality between ecstasy and torment. Thanks to a wise use of light and color that seems to merge painting and photography, the author coins an original actualization of female beauty, projecting it into a present made of dark and light that still preserves in itself the legacy of classicism and obscure archetypes.

Agata Stępień‘s paintings also generate an exquisitely feminine narrative. The artist is at the center of this tale, comprising self-portraits, paintings of other women, and ‘Reminiscences of a Mother’ or ‘Reminiscences of a Carnival,’ alongside works entitled ‘Chats with the Soul’ and ‘Always Ask the Fool’. These are stratified works, painted over by the artist numerous times, over several years, scraped, and dipped in resin. “The inspiration underlying my creative process emerges from suppressed areas within the psyche so as to uncover what is uncertain, hidden, or apparently marginal. Through my art, I manifest that which has yet to come to light, that which lies tucked away in my subconscious, offering the viewer a complex vision, one that extends beyond the mere sum of the parts. My instinct is to use the space on the canvas to narrate a story which holds a secret in its heart: a mystery to be resolved together with the spectator.” [Agata Stępień]

The exhibition has the media support of the Adam Mickiewicz Institute.