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.
Marked by her refusals, his storms in the face of denials of fundamental rights, the work of Silva USTA is just as shot through with this joy, this positivity at the foundation of his temperament.
As a counterpoint to this first set, the visual artist thus offers a second family of characters. Ici, a cosmopolitan and plural society is unfolding where everyone seems to be able to enjoy their freedom : families on a walk, surfer in search of a wave, artist indulging in dripping on the ground and young woman with heels in evening wear. Characters that could just as easily be those of the Riviera metropolis, of a megacity facing the sea, fashion and nightlife, or an imaginary Eden, probably less ideal than it seems. Ici, an albatross casts the shadow of the journey, a lion jealously watches over his capital and takes a closer look, the faces of these human beings could just as easily be those of the previous fresco.
Confusion is sown, and it could well be that we are no longer anywhere other than in the depths of the human psyche. It is between these two shores, that the visitor is invited to pass.
exhibition from 24 June 24 July 2022
Sainte-Elisabeth Chapel
06230 Villefranche-sur-Mer
