“The brutal and cynical news collided with my own concerns.
Strange, mischievous and disturbing creatures besiege my mind.
They seem determined.
I let them guide my gestures, mechanical with a repetitive, hypnotic, cadenced rhythm:
Scissors, threads, needles, seams, sutures, overlays, repairs...
They are embodied in the moment creating their story and tracing their way on the cotton weft.
I don't know if it's me who pulls the strings or they who lead the dance.
They tell of journeys without return, they speak of distant lands, of what unites us and what separates us, of our demons and our gods, of our sorrows, and of other possible shores.
They are my inner chaos, my reflection in the mirror, the sum of all my fears, my doubts and my hopes...
....the creatures of the mined lands...."
Barbara d'Antuono, May 2022.
Sewing by hand like others recite mantras and deciding nothing in advance, Barbara d'Antuono lets images emerge without any particular coherence with each other, but to which she gives shape in a kind of urgency. Her meeting in Haiti with Baron Samedi and the mythology linked to voodoo, as well as the traumatic splashes of the 1986 coup d'etat and the abuses she witnessed, precipitated her into a need to say the unspeakable:
“Sewing, suturing, closing these wounds, grafting one fabric onto another, but also “embroidering” to give meaning, sometimes to testify to my deep desire to bring together the two cultures that inhabit me”.
Globe-trotter, she nourishes her work with her travels, particularly in Africa where she finds voodoo and on the slopes of all the volcanoes of the world. Creator of imagination, she gives birth under her fingers to a jubilant, dreamlike, ironic, carnivalesque and sometimes naive world. Impregnated with this delicious mixture all his work condenses in a flamboyant baroque syncretism, where humor is never far away and Haiti always present.
Corsican of Italian origin born in 1961, Barbara d'Antuono left France in the 80s for the West Indies and Jamaica. It was in the artistic abundance of Haiti, where she stayed for 5 years, that she learned about painting and sculpture, notably in the studio of the Haitian painter Ronald Mevs. The magic, her inner demons and the aesthetics of her work as a visual artist are revealed to her. She began her artistic career with assemblages of wood and bone, collages, totems, fetishes... Babette El Saieh, daughter of the great collector Issa El Saieh, gave her her first chance to exhibit at the Olofson hotel in Port au Prince. After several exhibitions in Haiti, she left the island following the 1986 coup. Back in France, she developed her own technique combining sculpture, painting, graphics, sewing, poetry and music.
From 1995, she exhibited regularly in Paris, Germany... She participated in several group exhibitions, including one in tribute to Wilfredo Lam at Unesco. Recognized by the Art Factory and Art de Rien galleries, she has exhibited several times at the Lavoir Moderne Parisien as well as at the Chapelle du Collège de Carpentras.
In 2014, she presented a few magnetic paintings, textile paintings and fetish dolls in the group exhibition Follow my gaze, which marked the birth certificate of The eye of the bearded woman. After a first exhibition at the Claire Corcia gallery in 2019 entitled "Outsider art III", then a second in 2021 with the exhibition "Vagabond spirits" at the Claire Corcia gallery in collaboration with L'œil de la femme à beard, here is his third exhibition “Creatures of mined lands” at the Galerie Claire Corcia, in collaboration with L'œil de la femme à beard.
Read more
