EVERY CARESS, A BLOW

Skin is heavily featured in the works of Martina Zanin, understood in a material sense—leather, animal hide—at times articulated sculpturally or in two-dimensional form, engraved with words or juxtaposed with photography. Above all, though, skin as an aesthetic and philosophical dimension. Our epidermis is perhaps the first sensory organ through which we experience the world. It is the surface upon which our history is inscribed, where only pain leaves visible traces. What we carry on our skin are furrows and scars. We perceive it as a direct emanation of the soul; at the same time, it is on the skin that we wish to keep close what we love: it is the site of intimacy that remains, paradoxically, the most exposed organ. Martina Zanin’s exhibition speaks of pain, of how it can at times be dangerously seductive, and of how the boundary between protection and control is difficult to discern. The beauty of her works lies precisely in their embrace of these ambiguities, in showing us how complex reality, life, and above all love, truly are through new forms and unprecedented metaphors. To explore these themes, the artist turns to the world of falconry, an ancient hunting art from which she draws images, materials, and sentiments. The first room of the exhibition is already explicit. A series of photographs overlays details of birds of prey with fragments of human bodies and the image of a rabbit. What relationship exists between human and hawk? And what indissoluble bond unites bird of prey and rabbit, predator and prey? Beyond the obvious, we must acknowledge the hawk’s terrifying beauty. It is impossible not to be drawn to it, even when one identifies with the rabbit. Those talons would sink so easily into our flesh, beneath our skin, and perhaps this is the most disturbing aspect of these images. Perhaps also because a truth difficult to accept is that being human means being different from one another precisely in pain. It is as if our individuality, our uniqueness, were defined more by sorrow than by joy, and this is evident in the undertone of pride we feel when we find the courage to open up to others by recounting the painful events we have lived through. The photographs possess a strongly narrative, almost cinematic structure, shaped by the way the zoom crops the image to focus on details—as if they were frames extracted from a sequence—and by the montage of a triptych placed on the floor. Seriality becomes a formal element in the second room, where two sculptures are created through the assembly of robust falconry gloves, made of thick dark leather, used almost as a decorative element ready to become an aestheticising and deceptively innocuous composition. Yet the solidity of the glove remains intact—so seductive, so secure—almost as if it were a tool stolen from practices of sexual domination. In the next room, the cinematic dimension of the works emerges with even greater force. A single metal sculpture is composed of a repeated hawk talon, as if caught in the act of seizing prey. The work recalls photographic studies of dynamism and movement, especially animal locomotion, by figures such as Eadweard Muybridge (1830–1904), and connects this type of sculpture to the photographic and narrative matrix from which the artist’s work began. The coldness of the sequence reveals the ruthlessness of power and violence, often grounded in precise and implacable ritualism. But not only that: this talon suspended in space evokes the very essence of command, often based on repetition as an educational or manipulative device, just as it is often founded on the inexorable, methodical repetition of punishment. This dynamic finally finds a kind of stillness in the last room of the exhibition. A rigid metal structure supports and encloses a living module made of leather, inside which there is space for only one body, positioned vertically. A den, or cocoon, into which we may enter and linger, allowing ourselves to be enveloped by this once-living, still strongly odorous material. It could be an object arriving from an ancient past as much as from a science-fiction future. The lingering doubt is whether we have finally reached safety or whether we have merely stepped into the final trap. Antonio Grulli