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Flash Art
December, January 2003
Lala Meredith-Vula
Alberto Peola, Turin |
Gigantic black and white photographs, in hues of leaden grey, depict
naked women and children who, with slow, almost ritualistic gestures,
are absorbed in washing themselves in a crumbling Turkish bath. These
are all images pulled out of hiding, in a sense stolen by the Sarajevo
artist Lala Meredith Vula, during her anthropological and artistic
research, centring on the theme of feminine identity, carried out
between 1994 and 1996 in a hamam on the Albanian/ Montenegrin border.
Alongside these photos from the “Bathers” cycle (presented
in the Albanian pavilion at the Venice Biennale of 1999) are displayed
three images from the new series Marginalised People, carried out
in Rome. In this series, illegal immigrants are posed, alone, under
the soaring arches of sumptuous baroque churches in Rome. Their countenance
is marked with exhaustion and hardship, but their gaze is intense,
beautiful and full of dignity.
The same beauty can be perceived in the bathers, some of whom have
attitudes and gestures which could be called refined, or even sensual,
in striking contrast with the extreme poverty of the architectural
and social context of the shooting location. So much so that one begins
to draw an iconographic comparison with famous art historical examples:
the Valpinçons bathers, the Turkish Bath by Ingres and Toulouse-Lautrec’s
Toilette.
Because Meredith-Vula is not a photo reporter of social issues, but
an artist who understands very well the history of Western Art.
Guido Curto
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