VENUS OF MURI. A SEARCH FOR TRACES
2024
Group exhibition from April 27 to July 28, 2024
Curator team: Brigitt Bürgi and Peter Fischer
Vernissage: April 27 from 2 pm. Artist Talk with me on July 7, 2024 from 2 pm
"ZITA(T)"
Venus is the Roman goddess of erotic love and beauty.
The seat of love is the heart.
And the heart serves as the starting point for my video installation "ZITA(T)". More precisely: Zita's heart.
As I learned in the exhibition on the history of Muri Abbey, the heart of Zita Maria delle Grazie Habsburg-Lorraine, the last Empress of Austria, has been buried in Muri since her death in 1989. Her body, on the other hand, is in the Habsburg crypt in Vienna. I am fascinated by this separate burial of the heart in the cult of the dead, which goes back a long way. Even in Egyptian burial rites, the heart is said to have received special treatment because it is supposedly one of the immortal parts of the body.
The heart is therefore the epitome of life and soul. The mystic Hildegard von Bingen took the idea of the "Domus Animae" further: the soul, like a fire, is the center of the dwelling. From here, thoughts would emanate and rise up into the brain, where they would be transformed. The fire of the heart, together with the coldness of the brain, produces the equilibrium of thought.
I let myself be inspired by this wonderful idea for my video installation. I arrange four marble slabs with curved edges to form a kind of "stage"; two lying down, two standing at right angles. I place a pair of black and white high heels in the middle of the recess in the two upright slabs. The two shoes are arranged into a closed form by connecting the pin heels and soles. This shoe object only stands on its tips. I arrange a red plaster heart in front of the pair of shoes to heighten the drama. I project a video recording of a fireplace onto this stage-like installation. The fire crackles on the cold marble, simultaneously flickering around Zita's high heels. The shadow generated by the shoe object reveals a heart or a uterus. Zita is alive. Long live Zita.
Technical specifications:
Video installation, approx.140 cm x 108 cm x 54 cm, 2023
Single-channel video with sound, 1'30 in loop
Marble slabs, high heels, plaster heart, lace cloth
