Representing Women as Spiritual Beings

Black Oracles, 2007.

What was your childhood like?  Did you want to be a photographer when you were a child? How did you start your journey as a photographer?

I was born in Italy, in the Veneto region, into a Roman Catholic family. My uncle was a missionary in Africa and one of my aunts was a nun. My parents often invited African clergy members to our home to watch films and look at photographs about their missions. I was always fascinated by that world. I graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice. After a short period of painting and drawing, I decided to use a camera to produce my first works, which were part of the “Body Art” movement. I worked with nature, with trees and mythical figures like “Daphne” and “Apollo”. My first black and white photographs were entitled “Mimesis” and I produced mould sculptures, like “Armour – Chrysalides”. Throughout my career I have continued to work intensively with sculpture and photography; more recently producing veiled figures, where a rigid, sculpted veil again becomes a kind of “Armour–Chrysalis” and the veil worn by my figures becomes a “container”.

Maïmouna Patrizia Guerresi

Your photographs have some kind of mythic and sacred expression, how do you explain your work?
The themes of my first art work were mythology, like Daphne and Apollo etc. Where I analysed the moment when Apollo is going to take Daphne, her becaming a tree, a vegetable to avoid being raped, a way to protect them from male violence. Metaphors for the fear that paralyzes you and makes you become a vegetable. And then blend a form of natural defense to survive the abuses of society. In my recent work, the veil worn by my characters becomes a way of protection, both aesthetic and ethical but anyway, mine is an artistic interpretation, a metaphor of the veil.
In my recent work, I'm still inspired by themes and subjects of mythology and biblical religious “Genitilla al Wilada” – This female figure wears a garment-sculpture, with a central black cavern from which many bubbles emerge, like brand new and weightless insights, beings, or worlds. Genitilla to Wilada is a character that I described in my work that has two names "Genitilla" which is the name of an archaic pagan festival, and the other of "Al Wilada" which in Arabic means the woman who gives birth.
I like to find more meanings ancient and ancestral about women's spirituality in my work.

Most of your works mainly focused on marginalised women. As you work on cultural expression, why do women on your photographs represent collective characteristics like- The Sisters, The Giants, Virgin, etc.?
The women I represent in my work are spiritual beings. But I prefer to interpret them with dark skin, such as African and Asian women, who are often marginalized or subjugated by the male-dominated society. I interpret them in my work as the Giants of the spirit I want to bring out the great spiritual value, merciful and motherly woman. I like to interpret the feminine spirit through portraits of women who are close to my heart like- Asian, Arab and African women.

Untitled, 2008-2010.

In your photographs you have a colour preference, there is a dominance of white, red and black. I also observed you use circles like in your story “Illumination 1”. Tell us more about your working style and motifs that you have used so frequently.
The colours for me are symbols and metaphors that I often use in my work. White is a colour that I use often, for example to mark the faces, hands and sometimes the feet of my characters as a symbol of light. Like a white bisection marking the confines or borders between life and death, the known and the unknown.  White also recalls the colour of milk, which is an element I often use in my work, referring to many African and Asian cultures and traditions, as a symbol of sacrifice and purification, black and white is the colour of the Sufis. Black recalls the colour of the clothes of Muslim women, is a mystical colour. The red recalls the colour of sacrifice, like the blood, but also a symbol of the life.

Your website and some of your works carried Islamic motif, for example- Arabic words, chadors, etc. Is there any reason for using these motifs?   
The word you see on my website means Maimouna in Arabic, I used also my name written in Arabic in some of my work, usually I like to introduce my works with symbols and titles that have references to the themes- Arabs and Sufis, to give a precise context of my work.

You work on three different areas- photography, video and installation. Although they are connected with each other, which one you enjoyed most?
In the course of my career I have worked and experienced more technical, from photography to sculpture to video. Sometimes an idea needs to be interpreted with a means by using all three formats. But I really love to work with photography, and many times my sculptures are part of a scene where as a final act remains only the photographic shot.