"A dark age befell us once and never lifted, at least never for long. The first evil visionaries who enclosed the commons - the land and its fruits shared by a village - were the same who decided that the women doing something about it-righteous rioting against greed and hunger-were to also be enclosed: themselves, their bodies, their community, their productivity, and their children were to also become their visionary property."
"Skeletons abound as a reminder of disorder, anger, inevitable change: the need to loosen one's tethers to our over-disciplined bodies. As tarot would have it, the skeleton represents the end of an illusion, the 12th arcanum insists: "I make destruction a process of extreme splendor". She's an emissary for transformation. And do we need it! Death peeks over the horizon at the gaping defiance that opens this show, or sits awkwardly in the corner of a tentative nude scene."
The past persists through recurring enclosures of commons and the reduction of resisting women into property. Women who rioted against greed and hunger were branded heretics, witches, and sodomites and faced violent persecution. Paintings and drawings call forth the stubborn, unhinged, and disobedient spirits of those women. Death returns as a symbol of trickery, dereliction, hope, and a shared fate that counters secular attempts to deny mortality. Skeletons signal disorder, anger, and inevitable change; tarot frames destruction as sublime transformation. Death appears in varied guises: hovering, awkward, ritualized, and dancing within flames, haunting allegories and charcoal drawings.
#enclosure-of-commons #persecution-of-women #death-and-transformation #visual-art-painting-and-drawing
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