Cahier nr. 8 - Blessing of Ruins

Blessing of Ruins by Ada Marino was conceived for the exhibition at Casa Azul at Gordola in Canton Ticino. The title symbolises the union of two projects, Paterfamilias and New Moons.

Paterfamilias is an autobiographical project, exploring the theme of oppression in the domestic sphere, bringing to light the consequences of deteriorated relationships in male-dominated families. The project narrative stirs memories by virtue of its rawness. Feelings and resentments, as the fruit of this experience, work to raise awareness of a deviant cultural aspect that continues to demean the dignity of women. The images are wrapped in a form of surrealism that elevates and makes tangible the sense of conflict, frustration and tension of an unsafe refuge. The project aims to capture manifestations of female sentiments such as resilience, awareness and the desire to emerge, commenting on a silent social phenomenon yet one of destructive and disruptive forcefulness.
New Moons was created in 2023 in response to the Paterfamilias project (2022), in an attempt to make female resilience prevail and build a new beginning from it. The implementation of the project takes place just as the anti-abortion laws that bulldoze women’s rights and allow the invasion of women’s bodies come into force. New Moons rebels against gender distinctions, and promotes education that must be imparted from an early age, to prepare women to fight against male hegemony, in a kind of transmutation of resistance and perseverance working towards a new conscious and solidly social form of identity. While Paterfamilias investigates the complications of the patriarchal phenomenon, New Moons constitutes the elucidation and inner eclipse designed to foster women’s rebirth in the role of defenders of themselves; women who abandon their state of vulnerability and staticity in a kind of recovery from the trauma of male-dominated experience, who through the acquisition of knowledge, awareness and feminine union create a fertile territory for the construction of a more inclusive society.