A woman poses in colourful attire, blooming flowers in her hair and an intense smile on her face; another is standing in front of a mirror with her face covered with a mask decorated with a very distinctive thick monobrow; a third woman is portrayed with a book in her hands, on the cover there is a very famous picture of Frida Kahlo. Yet a link with the revolutionary Mexican painter is not the only thing these three women have in common.
Look closer at the photographs and you will realise the images were taken in a very small space, you can spot a bed in the background, some clothes hanging on a rail and a small window. And thick bars on that window.
The women in these portraits are indeed inmates at Milan's San Vittore prison and their photographs are part of an exhibition that opened today at La Triennale di Milano.
"PosSession" (until 28th July 2019) is dedicated to women in detention and chronicles the stages of a rehabilitation art project developed at Milan's San Vittore.
"PosSession" is divided in two parts, one on display at La Triennale and another at San Vittore: the former shows the universe of the women inside the prison; the latter features instead backstage pictures of the rehearsals of theatre shows that took place at San Vittore.
Photographer and director Cinzia Pedrizzetti took the portraits of the women wearing their ordinary clothes and the costumes used for a theatrical performance entitled "Diarios de Frida".
The project was inspired by Frida Kahlo's diaries and was organised by the CETEC - San Vittore Globe Theatre Compagnia Dentro/Fuori San Vittore, with the artistic direction of Donatella Massimilla, known for her theatre projects in prisons all over Europe and recently also in Mexico.
The portraits are intense and powerful and the title of the exhibition is referred to the photographic pose, but also to the fact that art possesses with its inspiring force the women portrayed in the pictures.
The images are part of a physical and metaphorical transformative process: the women transform themselves through their costumes and masks, they turn into Frida doubles, dressing like her, and interpreting some parts of a theatre performance based upon the artist's diaries, partially rewritten by the inmates.
There is a second transformative stage that we don't see as it involves a psychological transformation: these women are deeply transformed by detention, but also by art, and through the strength given to them by art they hope they will make it, leave behind their mistakes and the tiny confined spaces they share with other inmates and start a new life.
There is a duplicity also in the style the pictures were taken as the portraits in which the women are wearing their ordinary clothes are bathed in an artificial light, almost to decontextualise the spaces surrounding them; the images in which they are dressed up as Frida Kahlo are instead characterised by a natural light, to tell us that in their real lives they could be radical artists.
The exhibition is be accompanied by two photography workshops at San Vittore, while on 23rd July the inmates will star in the performance "Diarios de Frida: Viva la Vida" in the gardens of La Triennale. Before the performance there will be another photography workshop and inmates will be allowed to take pictures of the members of the audience in the Triennale gardens.
This is not the first time Milan's Triennale collaborates with San Vittore: the two places are not far one from the other, but they represent two different realities. These collaborations are a way to reduce the physical distance between these two spaces and prompt people to ponder about detention, society and healing through art, design and beauty.
Through these collaborations Milan's Triennale opens its doors to different realities and San Vittore invites locals and tourists to leave on its doorstep fears and prejudices and imagine a different future for the women who are in detention at the moment. Sounds like a great initiative and, hopefully, the world of fashion will join in at some point. What about a fashion show with the San Vittore women as models?
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