Autotomia

Autotomia is the first solo exhibition by Ludovica Anversa (Milan, 1996), featuring twenty-three new works, including oil canvases and drawings, produced by the artist over the past year. The title draws on the 1972 poem of the same name by Wisława Szymborska (Poland, 1923–2012), Nobel laureate for literature in 1996, which evokes the process of body splitting as deployed by certain animals under attack so as to distract the predator. A sense of continuous metamorphosis, detachment and intermediacy runs through all the works on show. Like those animals who voluntarily shed a part of themselves, we too practise autotomy, either to overcome trauma or to show society our more acceptable face. The figures in the paintings in the exhibition inhabit non-narrative spaces in which the body emerges as a permeable and receptive entity. Ludovica Anversa investigates images in their precariousness and sets out to generate a sense of vulnerability that blurs the boundaries between what is perceived and what is seen. The works draw on enigmatic visions, akin to residues or the materialisation of psychic experiences. These semi-abstractions elude any single interpretive definition and often drift towards the margins, manifesting in transparency as spectres, after-images or hallucinations. Evoking the body, by analogy, they follow rhythmic and vital movements that influence each other, hinting at moments of intimate transformation. In certain works, Ludovica Anversa slips into a more visceral dimension, where the flesh seems to be more present and the materiality of the body becomes more tangible. The idea of interior and interiority overlap. On the one hand, there emerges the idea of an image in the process of forming and containing the potential germ of its own evolution. On the other, we find the trace of what has already been, capable of recalling its presence through absence; something has ‘passed’ across the surface and is now visible only in the form of its shadow-print. This idea of ‘impression’ takes on visual and material qualities that are at times sensuous, at other times disturbing. When we stand before any image, we try to trace the body within it, for finding ourselves soothes us. If the image is fragmented and ambiguous or disturbs identity, system and order, we feel a sense of abjection. What are we ready to acknowledge and what do we reject in order to keep ourselves whole?