You can easily get lost while staring at the various layers composing Judith Scott's sculptures, or following just one yarn tightly wrapping her works. Among those multi-coloured threads you may be able to spot pieces of wood, a wheel, a chair, ribbons, and bits and pieces of fabric maybe ripped from discarded clothes. A selection of Scott's sculptures - maybe modern totems and idols, or more simply intriguing objects - can be currently explored at the 57th International Art Exhibition in Venice.
Born in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1943, Judith, who was deaf, mute, and with Down syndrome, spent years separated from her twin sister Joyce. Scott started creating her pieces in the mid-'80s after a 25-year internment in an institution for the mentally retarded and began attending the Creative Growth Art Center in Oakland, California.
The artist discovered textile art during a workshop by artist Sylvia Seventy and she developed her own modus operandi: though she is associated with the Fiber Art movement, Scott did not weave, sew or embroider, but proceeded to wrap her object in complex cocoons avoiding any kind of repeating schemes.
Scott would take random objects, such as a shopping cart, wire hangers, a chair and several tools that she would find at the Center and wrap them in coloured yarns. In a way it was as if she were hiding the objects inside her cocoons, creating rather unusual and intriguing three-dimensional sculptures and radically transforming the identity of the item she hid away and mummified under layers of fibres and fabrics.
Her art eventually entered in the permanent collections of many museums all over the world, she was included in several exhibitions and her life inspired several documentaries including "Outsider: The Life and Art of Judith Scott" by Betsy Bayha, "¿Qué tienes debajo del sombrero?" (What's under your hat?) by Lola Barrera and Iñaki Peñafiel and "Les cocons magiques de Judith Scott" by Philippe Lespinasse. Last year her sister Joyce published a book entitled Entwined: Sisters and Secrets in the Silent World of Artist Judith Scott to shed more light about their separated lives and Judith's passion for art.
The works at the Venice Biennale, on display in the Arsenale section called "Pavilion of Colors", a space exploring the source of emotion in colours and their effects on the human brain, are just a sample of the many sculptures (over 200 in 18 years) Scott created in her career.
Some of the objects are displayed on plinths, others hang from the ceiling; all of them are unique, but some were produced in pairs, almost hinting at her condition of being a twin, some critics argue indeed that through her work she was trying to come up with her own language, a code made of yarns, threads and colours that, combined together, formed symbolic words and sentences. After all, the complex and multi-layered sculptures could definitely be interpreted as physical manifestations of her impossibility of communicating.
The most intriguing thing about the sculptures? They remain unopened, but some of them have been X-rayed to reveal Judith's secret gifts to the world, forever locked in their soft shells.
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