Contemporary Artist Zoe Amor on 'Living Between Worlds'

 

New works for this exhibition have Prismatic Worlds in their titles, which is an idea shared from the quote above. The question resonates with me: Why not learn how to live in multiple worlds and acknowledge what art can offer in doing so? It may be as simple and as elusive as finding peace in the thrum of life; it may be an act of imaginative world - making or comprehending that opens your mind to new relationscapes; or as Catherine De Zegher writes, it may be towards “…a proposal for a multi-perspectival view allowing for a multitude of diverse positions, with the animate earth repositioned at the centre and a fully developed ecological concept that is both reflected in, and held accountable to, the political, social and economic world.”

 

Powerful ideas from a prismatic, matrixial and anthropomorphic view that has the entire biosphere of the planet with all its inhabitants at its heart. These are the ideas that deepen the well for me and broaden my perspectives on what art can be – it can live beyond borders, religions, politics, time and space and be culturally relevant to the spirit of the times.  

 

These ideas led me to evoke strong, archetypal shapes suggestive of both the sacred and the everyday in the month before I left – a basin of ceramic shell impregnated with red iron oxide set on a golden bronze tree ring; a bronze breastplate modelled from a pregnant woman at full term; pods from a rare eucalypt sculpted to a human scale, reminiscent of the bold, spare contours of marble and limestone sculptures created 5 millennia ago by women and men of the Cyclades. 

 

From May to June this year I had the opportunity to visit the ancient sites, natural wonders and cosmopolitan places of Athens, Crete, Heraklion, Amorgos, Naples, Pompei, Herculaneum, Syracuse, Agrigento, Mt Etna, the Aeolian Islands, Zurich and the Swiss Alps. I visited the Museum of Cycladic Art for the extraordinary exhibition: ‘Kykladitisses: Untold stories of women in the Cyclades. The first pan-Cycladic exhibition ever organized presenting the history of the Cyclades through the eyes of their women.’ It was a revelation to see these figures – mostly female - coloured with red ochres and other minerals, playing instruments, drinking wine, star gazing, in attitudes of blessing or birthing or laying down with the dead.

 

 In other museums throughout the Mediterranean I saw clay figures of men supporting birthing women; women enthroned as mothers, wives, priestesses, goddesses and death dealing archetypes; women as myth makers, philosophers, scholars, librarians, mathematicians, astronomers, poets, weavers, warriors, jewellers, sculptors, ceramicists, gardeners, painters, bull leapers, dancers, musicians, healers, scribes, teachers etc – in short, architects of their own destiny with sophisticated narratives that speak intimately and boldly across cultures and time. 

 

Of course I saw wonderful things made by men also but that is still and far too often the only narrative given. I have given birth to daughters, I am a creator, we all are. As artists we do not have to be defined by our sex – I would rather focus on what it means to be human.  

 

These thoughts and experiences with a focus on life giving and life affirming forms found their way into my mind a long time ago and are represented in this exhibition with the Cross Pollination and Nature’s Riot works.  I think often about cross - pollination as an essential environmental, cultural and evolutionary phenomenon and how flowers or winged creatures form a symbol for life itself. Imbued with mythic qualities, generating narratives about life and death and the interplay between humanity and the natural world, they are another reflection of the biosphere - a place where life dwells - and has done for at least 3.5 billion years.