Les Modules / Fondation Pierre Bergé-Yves Saint Laurent — Rosa Maria Unda Souki — Palais de Tokyo — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Past: November 4 → 27, 2011

Rosa Maria unda Souki’s paintings draw us toward an inner world, a journey through living spaces.

The series she produces, like so many points of view, follow one another almost obsessionally. The artist who comes from Venezuela has long been interested in her father’s colonial house, three hours drive away from caracas. in 2005 she produced a series entitled “33m2” in her first Paris apartment. She has repeated that approach more recently with “Trois pièces et quelques saisons” [Three rooms and some seasons], an exhibition taking as its theme her Montreuil apartment, which she left a few months ago to go back to Brazil where she is currently living. in response to the restricted space and the impossibility of standing at a distance, the image produced is distorted. every corner is painted attentively, every view resonates like an attempt to record reality exhaustively. For all that rosa Maria unda Souki’s work is mainly imbued with autobiographical references, the artist does not confine herself to her personal spaces. She has also taken an interest in the house of the poet Federico garcia lorca, and on this occasion has produced around fourty works, including a set of round pictures (tondi).

her research focusing on “espaces intimes” [Private spaces], initiated many years ago in her father’s house, has developed over time, and rosa Maria unda Souki has chosen to revert to it for her exhibition at the Palais de Tokyo. The painted interior spaces seem simultaneously to be lived in, but deserted. No presence is visible, only plant material flitting from one room to another makes us think that domestic life has gradually been effaced.

For her exhibition at the Palais de Tokyo, the artist is showing a set of twelve notebooks, entitled “cuadernos de expropiación” [expropriation notebooks]. in 2009, a law was introduced in Venezuela allowing the State to take over certain privately owned property, regarded as being of public interest. A proprietor could therefore find himself dispossessed of his living space at any moment. Through twelve stories the artist describes this state of fragility associated with a political situation that threatens memory and personal identity.

rosa Maria unda Souki creates images that question a territory in the process of changing. Based on an introspective approach, a poetic melancholy emanates from these works. an attempt to express her own thoughts and share a familiar universe, weave links that are remote from reality.