Press Release
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 07/12/2016
NATIONAL GALLERY: THE RAPES
AN EXHIBITION OF OLD MASTER STUDIES BY OONA LEGANOVIC
Berlin based artist Oona Leganovic takes on the overwhelming beauty and the misogynist horror of the paintings in the National Gallery in this upcoming show at Lima Zulu London. Violent sex, tender abuse, pictures that fight back and fighting back against the pictures. About how to salvage bits and pieces of the craft of image making when the well is hostile to you.
Inspired in part by the statistical approach of the Guerilla Girls (currently showing at Whitechapel Gallery), Leganovic mapped the paintings in the National Gallery that display sexualized violence (there are currently 21 on show, in 14 of its 46 rooms), then made studies from each and everyone of them. The resulting monotypes dissecting both the paintings themselves as well as the experience of unwanted memories after abuse are on show at critically acclaimed art project space Lima Zulu.
A project rooted in admiration of the old masters, this meditation on how to relate to rape culture if you can’t outrun it received a jolt of special relevance on the day that Leganovic finished the work: the day a man bragging of assaulting women was elected to become president of the United States of America. The old stories are far from over, and we have to deal with them now.
Lima Zulu London
11–16 December 2016
Opening night and artist talk Sunday 11 December, 7–9pm
After that 4–7pm daily, outside these hours by appointment.
Lima Zulu
Unit 3J
Omega Works
167 Hermitage Rd
London N4 1LZ
contact:
masterstudies@playinprogress.net
+44 747 8030 381
More images available here.
PDF here.
after Mazza, the Rape of Ganymede
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