MA(ta)SSE

Artworks from the series MA(ta)SSE

The initial ink drawings on paper, in which the bobbed black hair disentangles from the red threads that wrap around the bodies of the young women, date back to 2010. The following year Angela painted large canvases and allowed her tangled threads tospread across their larger scale.

Black, white, red–these colorswere chosen for their impact and the special evocative efficacy, and are clearly the protagonists of Angela’s artistic research. The combination of colors then exalts the precise and simple lines of the design, in a quest for purity and intimacy. Observing the protagonists of the MA(ta)SSE (ink drawings showing tangles of lines) is like being a peeping Tom peering through the keyhole; the eyes are drawn to some parts of the body that can barely be glimpsed across the red thread, that simultaneously supports and binds the physical and emotional fragility.

The inspiration was an ancient Chinese legend, in which the red thread was the symbol of inevitable fate decided by a superior power. Angela defines a pathway that winds through all the works in the series, creating a single long tale. The red thread, a metaphor of past experiences and memories that accumulate around and inside of each of us, it twists and joins the links of decisions that are someone else’s responsibility, creating tangles so dense they resemble masses, weights that burden us and that we cannot free ourselves from.

The figures are immobile, hanging by a thread on the white sheet or canvas, while waiting for something else to happen and change the outcome.

Text curated by Annalisa Bergo