Silence and grandiosity. A story marked by the time. The same time when we study, think and meditate about cultures, traditions…history. And on the history and its developments, assimilations and repeated reading, is based Zuleika Bisacchi´s photograph series.

Architectonic structures filled with time and facts constitute the support for the aesthetic construction of Bisacchi´s works. As stated by the artist, “each little piece carries an emotion”. And, from this emotive singularity, the aesthetic and conceptual plurality of the art is developed.

Inserted in those structures, the image of an undisciplined female body, wandering and traversing the architectonic spaces, refusing to maintain a passive symmetry and molding into the geometric forms of the ruins, serves as stage for the representation. The image of the body, devoid of vulgarity and intolerance, metaphorically rebels, since the denominated frailty, against everything that imprisons it or submits it to rules and stigmas.

The sequential moving of the female image, in the series, simulates a subtle and irreverent veil, which at the same time leaves almost imperceptible traces of the presence, like transparent clouds subtly invading impetuous and apparently motionless structures.  Plastic movements interfere and insert themselves in the cartography of the phallic columns. Architectonic structures which are scenario and bibliography of the history of mankind.

The finesse in the choreographic sliding, which the artist articulates in the insertion of the female image register filled with cultural symbolism, carries us through a silent and invasive ride that questions the stability of the architectonic ruins with its vertical and phallic configuration, visual metaphor of manliness.

This relation between the architectonic structures and body image configures a composition that evidences the impossibility of prohibiting the possibilities of representation, from a proposition of artistic bias, of mutation in the behavior, habits and way of acting interpretation. This transforms the series of photographs into a visual document that contradicts intimacy rules, culturally accepted according to traditions, which are understood by other cultures as rigid and incomprehensible. Thus, the series constitutes a manifest of discussion about the assimilation and interpretation of the culture of Others.

The insertion of the female image brings up a light and romantic transparency, which interlaces itself and slides in the graphic and pictorial composition. The images are projected in a flotation which, within the set, constitutes frames of a sequential and body dance movie, spatially repetitive, which wanders throughout the pieces and is structured as a sole piece. Movements that, frozen in the photographic support, highlight the body liberty, the rhythmic possibilities visually suggested and expressed in vibrations and emotions caused in the spectator, based on the reference of individual musical experiences.

In the female image transparency is diluted the difference between the abstraction and the figuration. It penetrates and dissolves in each interstice of the ruins, constituting, even in its transparency, an essential part of the represented set. As part of the composition, the image consolidates and defends its territory, trying to demonstrate, as a window open to the outside and based on another cultural vision, that the frailty is an indispensable element in the construction of the culture and in the social development. Without the frailty disguised by others, the impossibility of the whole would be evident.

Thus, Bisacchi suggests a structural relation in the composition and representation filled up with symbolisms, mysteries, while it proposes a union of intimacy and reciprocity in the relations between the images.

In the work of the artist there is a timelessness expressed in representation. The images that inspire eternity are mixed with the female representation of desire. And, at the same time, this represented desire evidences a need for survival and permanence. The frail present inside the eternally simulated past, outworn by natural factors or by the direct or indirect action of the man. There is a permanent mixture between the present and past, and a deep aura of meanings and messages.

The artist offers a relation between the presence and the absence, between the recognizable image and the imaginable reality, which is revealed in a particular representation full of meanings, intensity and aesthetic and conceptual deepness.

In the series of photographs, the artist structures a visual set of a puzzle illustrated by meanings and metaphors.  Illustrations that establish continuity between the natural ambit and the interference of men in it, and among the man´s relations, offer us visual tools enabling to establish a relation between art and life. With a tint of undeniable quality, Bisacchi honors the luxury in the form of representing the retrospective lucidity mixed with the present reality, in a unique artistic expression.

AndrésI.M. Hernández
Master in Visual Arts
Curator and producer

São Paulo, April 2011