In a contemporary world that tends toward the collapse of censures, taboos and, in particular, patriarchy, artists are undoubtedly at the forefront in contributing to this progressive, but unfortunately still slow, process of crumbling of ideals strongly rooted in traditionality and the common imagination. This is where the research of Turin-based photographer Alessandra Lai (1963) fits in, reflecting in particular on female feelings. Through the staging of choral performance acts, Lai aims to document the energy and unity sparked by a group of unknown women who, in a moment of great freedom, shed their “veils.” Set in a natural setting, the bodies are absorbed into the landscape, reuniting with nature. In this sense, the nude is not only a provocation, but becomes a symbol of restart that draws on the roots, the earth. This is how solitude gives way to union and rigidity to fluidity. A scream of feminine strength cries out in the face of the viewer, demanding to be heard and no longer ignored or belittled.

The compositions in Alessandra Lai’s “Women” project, echo in a sense that primal feeling portrayed by Paul Cézanne, a post-Impressionist painter, in his famous “Bathers.” As in Cézanne, the figures are integrated with the natural landscape, in Alessandra Lai rocky, arid and unwelcoming, instead green and prosperous in the works of the French painter. In both artists, there emerges a need to return to that golden age when humans and nature were perfectly in harmony. Unlike Cézanne, however, who does not invoke femininity or sensuality but rather is interested in a depersonalization of bodies, Lai portrays the personality of each woman, their expressiveness and dignity, with far more contemporary intentions.

Interesting is the shot that instead captures the women static, almost statuesque, without the dynamism that distinguishes the other shots. This is actually the original shot, the first in the performance, which sees the women’s faces covered by cloths that nullify their identity, just as happens in Renè Magritte‘s “The Lovers.” The message that Alessandra Lai conveys by inserting the element of the veil is similar to that of the Surrealist painter, namely the impossibility of fusion, an expectation that tends toward disappointment. An implicit will that leads to hiding, to conceal emotions under a veil, which is then undone by “the courage to be free in a make-believe world” because freedom “must be an act of faith.”



Courtesy by Alessandra Lai