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FLASH ART
DECEMBER 1999 – JANUARY 2000
Lala Meredith-Vula
Placentia Arte |
Between 1994 and 1996 Anglo- Albanian Artist Lala Meredith-Vula photographed
an ancient Turkish bath on the Albania-Montenegro border. The series
of large scale black and white photographs is entitled ‘Bathers’
and was exhibited in part, in the Albanian Pavilion at the latest
Venice Biennale.
The works have an impeccable appearance, formally refined and elegant.
Meredith-Vula’s research is definitely of a painterly kind.
She proposes an original re-reading of the classical theme of bathers
and she searches with great care for chiaroscuro light effects, where
the female bodies are simple forms and shadows within the compositions.
The artist achieved surprisingly painterly results through the cracks
of the crumbly walls and the natural light beams penetrating through
the cavernous ceilings. The endeavour takes on a wider interest and
becomes complete when one realises that the people who use these places
came from an extremely poor community of gypsies who find in the Turkish
bath, to quote the artist, “a temporary refuge” from the
external reality they incarnate. The imperfect bodies of women of
all ages take on rawer and earthier contours. All the solitude, the
silent despair, the scenes of women talking to each other, washing
one another or helping others to wash, in all their sincerity outline
a parallel reality, a form of beauty in which dignity is a major component.
The almost magical and dream-like atmosphere of the Turkish baths
creates a temporary sanctuary where one can completely detach oneself
from the outside world and rediscover one’s own universe.
Meredith-Vula analyses fragments of her own culture through a typically
Western language, achieving a perfect harmony between the two extremes.
Thus, the photographs are able to take the viewer to worlds filled
with stories rich in truly undiscovered and distant aspects (no matter
what angle one is looking from), in this way the images exert an original
and autonomous linguistic power.
Vittorio Barbieri
Translated by Jacopo Benci
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