Art and religion it’s a matter of FAITH.
The human and the numinous, two indissoluble and irreconciliable worlds in perpetual dialogue one with the other.Tourya Othman takes part in that very same dialogue, with her new body of works: “Faith” series, selected for the Biennale Internazionale d’arte contemporanea of Florence 2009.
faith series -tourya othman
Oils on canvas showing a novel rendering of present religiousness.The artist herself explains how her fascination for the power of faith and devotion grew out of a travel through Cuba, in 2001. That journey gave her the necessary inspiration to create “Santos” series – unusual interpretations of images of worship leading to unexpected perspectives about the sacred.After that same creative vein, then, “Faith” series was born, this time taking us into a different conceptual dimension, compared to the previous paintings:these portraits of nuns, with features of dolls and the value of icons, immediately lead us to a closer stage of religiousness, more intimate, more mundane.
A domestic religiousness, more focused on objects and concrete life, linked to traditions and rituals, to those specific cultural peculiarities recognizable even if included in the same theological horizon.
faith series - tourya othman
From here,the artistical research gets further, gets to question about what is remaining of the ancient, primitive spirituality and how much socio-cultural differences enhanced or suffocated the original mystical power of religion.
The canvases probe the most private facets of contemporary life, meditating about the existence of uncontaminated professings, in the form of a reality lived with honesty rather than a mere doctrine bound by specific jestures and symbols.The realistic style of these images pave the way to a dialectic confrontation between the secularity of the subjects displayed – phisically individuated – and the incorporeal consistency of the identities standing behind those same subjects.
This is a path that leads the audience in front of the atavistic cosmic interrogatives ruling the inexhaustible exchange among men, mundane conventions and divine aspirations.
You can find Tourya’s works here:
http://issuu.com/ttart/docs/tourya_-faith_and_santos_paintings_ii
[all images via touryaothman.net]
