ART-TRIBUTE: Ladies’ Paradise, Part I

In the exhibition “Ladies’ Paradise”, four female artists explore the notion of the body, internal desires, the role of the female and abstraction through different mediums at the Grace Belgravia, a spa and medical centre for women. Through variations of material, medium, texture and techniques, each of the five artists’ practices and works overlap through intimacy and form (Part II).

By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Everything I Want & Open Space Contemporary

The title of the exhibition “Ladies’ Paradise” is inspired by Emil Zola’s novel “Au Bonheur des Dames” (1883). The novel tells the story of Denise Baudu, a 20-year-old woman from Valognes who comes to Paris with her younger brothers and begins working as a saleswoman at the department store “Au Bonheur des Dames”. Zola describes the inner workings of the store from the employees’ perspective, including the 13-hour workdays, the substandard food and the bare lodgings for the female staff. Denise’s story is played against the career of Octave Mouret, the owner of Au Bonheur des Dames, whose retail innovations and store expansions threaten the existence of all the neighborhood shops. His aim is to overwhelm the senses of his female customers, forcing them to spend by bombarding them with an array of buying choices and by juxtaposing goods in enticing and intoxicating ways. The modernisation of the store and the different roles of women in the book are intertwined with the structure of the exhibition, which focuses on femininity, the body, the differing levels of society, gender and identity politics. The four female artists are not only inspired by their surroundings, but also by their inner world as they explore the notion of belonging, identity to a place and the politics of the body. Ladies’ Paradise merges form, abstraction and figuration in response to Grace Belgravia’s classic architecture and location. In her work Merve İşeri paints directly from the tube, both in acrylic and oil, using pastels and her fingers to work on the cotton she has dyed. In her symbolic, abstract paintings, İşeri aims to develop personal conversations with the viewer. In the same vein, Sofia Stevi merges two opposites in her work; living and dreaming. Her large scale paintings on untreated cotton fabric convey a simultaneous sense of passively observing and actively experiencing different spaces. Clementine Keith-Roach’s artistic style comes from her interest in museums, interiors, souvenirs and ancient objects of the history of form and texture which all have a presence in her sensuous ceramics. She exhumes typologies of art long abandoned, here taking the Cycladic nipple vase and reconceptualising it as an imprint of her own and other women’s bodies. Güneş Terkol takes inspiration from her immediate surroundings, collecting materials and stories, which she weaves into her sewing pieces, videos, sketches and musical compositions both collectively and individually.

Info: Curators: Huma Kabakcı & Nadja Romain, Grace Belgravia, 11C W Halkin Street, London, Duration 22/2-8/4/18, Days & Hours: Daily 11:00-18:00, www.openspaceistanbul.co.uk