The last exhibition "supremacy / exclusion” of Silva Usta expresses his outrage at the growing denial of human rights.
It is an installation in the form of two panels (2*7 m long by 2m high) illustrating the exodus of populations undergoing wars, crimes against humanity and genocides in the face of a cosmopolitan and plural society in complete freedom.
At the origin there is indignation, this positive refusal, this high consideration of justice and love where the struggles for the rights of women and all come together, whatever their ethnic origins, cultural, religions and their sexual orientation.
Silva Usta discovered in the international press the deportation of Uyghurs from Xinjiang and their internment. A situation that echoed in the interiority of this visual artist, who then developed an obsessive research practice on the exodus of populations linked to wars, crimes against humanity or, in the extreme, genocide. A subject, subjects, which led her to the creation of large human frescoes, monumental, commensurate with his anger at the denial of human rights at the state and territory level.
In a first set, each character or group testifies to a particular fact : the trade of black slaves to the New World, the Genocide of Armenian Christians in the Ottoman Empire, the Holocaust set up by the Nazi regime and the pogroms of the Jews by Tsarist and Soviet Russia, as well as the exodus of refugees during the Vietnam War and the exile of refugees who perish today in the Mediterranean. Souls drawn in black felt-tip pen, whose silhouette springs from the immaculate white paper. Their very graphic aesthetic is reminiscent of the previous feminist series by Silva Usta, dubbed “Pioneers”, in tribute to those who fought for rights and freedoms in the world.
In this new work in large format, the visual artist induces a relationship of scale between the visitor and these oversized characters, freed from the notion of color. Without getting lost in documentary precision, here she launches a visceral cry of woman and citizen in the face of inter-human violence : enslavement, the deportation of populations, severe deprivation of liberty, whether for economic reasons, policies, cultural, and/or ethnic.
Marquée par ses refus, ses tempêtes face aux dénis des droits fondamentaux, l’œuvre de Silva USTA est tout autant traversée par cette allégresse, cette positivité au fondement de son tempérament.
En contrepoint de ce premier ensemble, la plasticienne propose ainsi une seconde famille de personnages. Ici, se déploie une société cosmopolite et plurielle où chacun semble pouvoir jouir de sa liberté : familles en promenade, surfeur en quête de vague, artiste s’adonnant à un dripping au sol et jeune femme à talon en tenue de soirée. Des caractères qui pourraient tout aussi bien être ceux de la métropole azuréenne, d’une mégapole tournée vers la mer, la mode et la vie nocturne, ou d’un Eden imaginaire, sans doute moins idéal qu’il n’y parait. Ici, un albatros fait planer l’ombre du voyage, un lion veille jalousement à son capital et à y regarder de plus près, les visages de ces êtres humains pourraient tout aussi bien être ceux de la précédente fresque.
La confusion est semée, et il se pourrait bien que l’on ne soit plus ailleurs que dans les tréfonds de psyché humaine. C’est entre ces deux rivages, que le visiteur est invité à passer.
exhibition from 24 June 24 July 2022
Chapelle Sainte-Elisabeth
06230 Villefranche-sur-Mer
