Inner power spaces

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Malki by Maimouna Guerresi

For Italian artist, Maïmouna Guerresi, mystery is something that transcends human limits. It is also hope, unrecognisable power of faith and suspension. And this is what the photographer, sculptor and video installation artist has tried to evoke and depict in her latest series of work.

Her first photography exhibition, Inner Space, presented by Tasveer Art Gallery in association with Tod’s, in India is in response to the country and its culture.
“The images I present are timeless, rigorous, and classic. They are inner representations of a greater Indian spirituality,” she says. Guerresi’s work on India is a continuation of her research regarding the mystic body. She says, “I am attracted to cultural hybridisation, contamination, and religious syncretism. I am more interested in the similarities rather than the differences.”
Guerresi usually paints the backdrops in a studio. Then models are dressed in a garment made by the artist — an empty, sculptural form — to represent a metaphysical and supernatural body. For her the mantle defines and identifies the overall shape and the emptiness or void becomes a metaphor of fear of what’s unknown and frightening. In most of Guerresi’s work only the face, hands, and sometimes the feet, are visible, like in ancient icons. She marks these visible parts of the body with a white line, which she says, symbolises purification, the known and the unknown.
“I cover and crown the head with a series of objects in the shape of hats or minarets which are made with simple materials and then composed according to the Sufi Muslim tradition of manually producing their own clothes,” she says. The minaret hats are tall and narrow architectural forms.
The models in the photographs sometimes hide their faces with a hand gesture, or are blindfolded, or simply have their eyes closed. “They seem to detach themselves from the world in order to tune into the divine cosmic spirit,” says Guerresi, who insists that her conversion to Islam has been a big influence on her work.
She effortlessly interconnects various mediums like photography, sculpting, and installations to create a more rounded expression. Above all, she likes to shoot the intensity of the gaze, the body’s posture, the position of the hands, and the garment itself — all balanced and strong.