Marzanna,
Yours Again
Zoe Paul and Faye Wei Wei
16 January
– 11 February 2018
Hot
Wheels Projects
41, Athens
Spring
is drawing near,
does not want to leave,
freezing nights linger,
gently still.
Marzanna,
winter mistress,
we will drown you,
put an end to winter.
away with the ice,
away to the sea,
it finally come
us- buxom spring.
from a Polish children’s song, Marzanna )
the end of winter, children gather to drown the Marzanna in the
closest lake, marking the beginning
of a new spring. Marzanna dolls, representative of the Baltic and
Slavic goddess associated
with seasonal rites, are created only to be destroyed. Part of a folk
tradition that has stood
the test of time, communities in Eastern Europe come together on the
first day of spring to create
their own effigy.
The
dolls are collectively woven out of straw, adorned in white cloth,
ribbons, necklaces, flowers, pine
cones, branches and twine. Comparably, the clay beads in Zoe Paul’s
bead curtains are handrolled in groups, bringing people together in a
traditional and meditative process. The harnessing of age-old
materials and techniques is propelled in the stages that follow;
dipping, drenching and sinking
the Marzanna, firing, threading and hanging the beads. Marzanna has
become a malleable symbol;
freed from her historical and sacred significance, she is a vessel
for expressing personal mythologies
and an embodiment of new beginnings. The annual remaking of the doll
is mirrored in Faye
Wei Wei’s reconditioning of motifs; on the one hand, unwaning and
recurrent, on the other, novel
and transformed. The ghastly baba jaga witch figure and the fanciful
princesses and knights are
drawn from the same medieval-cum-fantastical sphere, redevised and
personalized by their creators.
The
works of Paul and Wei Wei engage with the visual weaving of their own
individual narratives. Their
work references both practical and visual histories, developing a
language that combines the then
and the now. Within the gallery, these dialogues are instigated but
not settled. Paul’s ceramic heads
are placed precariously around the space, suspended at great heights
to sing out their wordless
dialogue; aiai, oi, au, ea. Metaphorically reverberating through the
space, the sounds linger, ricocheting
off of Wei Wei’s jesters, sea urchins, monarchs and snakes. The
figures float on the canvas,
the surface reminiscent of a body of water where images resurface and
reappear from uncertain
depths. The Marzanna is led through the town, marching towards her
inevitable descent.
When
these narratives are unwoven, and the Marzanna drowned, only traces
of symbols remain to guide
an exploration.