XOXO (All You Need Is Love)

While Inès Mélia’s practice spans a range of topics and mediums, it inexorably converges around a single denominator: Love. Not cheesy, but heartfelt, and above all existential. The works on view allude to romance and intimate personal experiences while flirting with pop references. In this spirit, drawing on the tale of Bluebeard, the Masks on show investigate whether to obey patriarchal rules or transgress them, and whether truth should prevail over blissful ignorance. The masks evoke those worn in society to conceal one’s monstrosity. Supposedly removed once shrouded in the comfort of a genuine relationship, yet possibly persisting, those disguises raise questions about the acceptance or rejection of vulnerability once exposed.

Along these lines, The Curtains series conceals messages behind shredded fabric tape, readable only if moved by the viewer. By disrupting passive spectatorship, the works propose a choice: to reveal what is hidden or leave it concealed, heightening the tension between secrecy and disclosure, subject and object, domesticity and publicity, suspended betwixt interior and exterior realms. If Freed from Desire can recall the famous song, together with The dream is not to care about anything ever again, they suggest an irreverent take on independence.

Similarly, the works, Tu me déchires, Did you get home safe, Introduce me to the World you grew up in, all derived from a series of interventions Mélia conducted in Paris’ subway, bring the intimate into public space, much like Valentine’s Day propels love into the fast pace of everyday life.

In the same way, Geraldina Bassani Antivari presents a range of subtle works that carry a myriad of layered meanings. Delicate embroideries, marquetry pieces, and Murano glass sculptures reveal themselves as far more than they initially appear. By integrating a certain form of sarcastic language to the beautiful, almost sacred, fabric and wooden pieces, made of extremely precious material, not only does she render craft and the sacred relatable, but also elevates the relatable to the level of the sacred. Breaking binaries of all sorts, Geraldina Bassani Antivari leaves behind the profane/sacred boundary and its romantic correlate: the single/married dichotomy. The compelling paradox thus found in works such as Ardentemente, Intensamente or Shit Show and Culo, destabilizes the audience while giving a new, playful, interpretative key on the concepts of beauty, rarity, preciousness, delicacy but also desire and aspiration.

Funny, yet terribly real, the works are a genuine testimony of lifelong observations. In the same vein, the series of glass sculptures presented, are not only the results of an incredible “entente” with the murano masters and the artist, but also an almost alchemical consequence of the “impromptu” modus operandi used in the furnace... Spontaneous, yet meticulous, Bassani Antivari’s approach to glass-making, permitted her to create unique pieces recalling the natural shape of women's breasts: plural, singular, varied, and all unique. Contrasting with the commodification of what has been a symbol of fertility, femininity and womanhood, her sculpture defies the male gaze by breaking the standard. Ethereal, the blown-glass sculptures seem to embrace their fragility in an act of strength and subversion against objectification and conformity.

Linked by the same witty use of words and irreverent approach to life, but also sense and sensibility (comme dirait l’autre), Inès Mélia and Geraldina Bassani Antivari deploy works that cast Love in a new light. Using the oxymoric nature of personal experiences and transforming them into universal truths, the two artists put the sentiment under philosophical pressure in a state of tension between humour and crafts. Lying at the edge of both domestic and public spheres, Inès Mélia and Geraldina Bassani Antivari revise the general expectation on Love, especially for women, and leave you wondering whether, like glass, emotions expand under fire. However, as Virginia Woolf brilliantly said “ One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.” So perhaps that’s where the purpose of Valentine’s Day lies in; a good dinner.