Kathryn Hart THE OTHER VOICE, a site specific installation

from Kathryn Hart, THE OTHER VOICE catalog, a site-specific installation

Kathryn Hart, THE OTHER VOICE, a site-specific installation

23 January - 20 March 2020, Sala Coll Alas de Gandia, SPAIN

Artist's Note: THE OTHER VOICE title was inspired by the early Western European history reference to men as "the first voice."

catalog essay by Amparo Zacares Pamblanco after Exposicion photos and before Inauguration photos

Exposicion Photos

**Sala Coll Alas exterior at Plaça Escoles Pies 9**

the other voice

Kathryn Hart, committed poetics

catalog essay by Amparo Zacares Pamblanco (excerpt)

The multidisciplinary artist Kathryn Hart, formed between the United States and Europe, has a recognized professional trajectory arising from her exhibitions, both individual and collective, in various parts of the world...

For this exhibition housed in the Sala Coll Alas de Gandia, having passed before in part by the Venice Biennale, the artist presents a series of abstract spatial structures of architectural cut inspired by the Greek myth of Aracne. This story that appears in Book VI of Metamorphoses by Ovid...tells of a challenge that would go from literature to iconography with the famous painting Las Hilanderas de Velazquez (1657)... preserved in the Prado Museum.

As a whole, the compositions and spatial montage of the interpretation of this myth by the North American artist is part of the generation of women artists who have conquered the public through the sober and subtle beauty of their photographs, paintings, and installations linked to an earthy art (arte materico) in which the three-dimensional character has prevailed by making environments or sculptures as a creative expression.

In the same creative process, she uses diverse materials ranging from wire to thread, fabric, handmade paper, sand and all kinds of found objects with which she achieves a certain configuration of objects in a dispersed and ascending direction to serve as a loudspeaker fo those dissident Renaissance women by whom she has been inspired.

The artist is not interested in recovering the traditional role of the woman-wife who knits and waits as Penelope did. Rather she ponders and turns her attention to the fabric woven by Aracne the young woman who dared to embroider the scandals and intrigues of the gods and whom Athena turned into a spider

...contextualizing the theme enhances the capacity of women to connect with each other by creating networks... On the other hand, the referent figures are linked to knowledge, rebellion and transgression. So to restore the voices of those who were silenced, Kathryn Hart artistically recreated the testimony those bold and courageous women of the sixteenth century left behind (such as Lucrecia Borja, Maria Enriquez, and Moderata Fonte), thus reconciling art and gender...and opposing the usual trend in the history of Western art where it is easy to find a stereotyped femininity inherited over centuries in which women themselves...contemplated the images that represented them and accommodated the male vision

In line with North American contemporary art, the artist uses montage to create collage-based paintings and assembled sculptural pieces in which the matrix component has a great spatial effect. It is also worth mentioning the curatorial work that has successfully spun and narrated the complete exhibition space.

To this end, the spectacular nature of the exhibition is born from the same combinations of spatial geometries of the elaborate abstract pieces and the games of light and shadow added to them. Precisely controlling light is another procedure the artist does to dazzle and give elegance to the tall and sizable assemblies with which she restores dignity and strength to those other voices that have been erased from history.

From this artistic proposal emerges the need to review the secondary role that women have had throughout history, claiming the consideration they really deserve as producers of meaning. At the end of the day, it is necessary to look at the different artistic manifestations of women in the arts and to ask whether they were able to stand out with their own voices within a patriarchal culture with mythical reminiscences. In this general male imaginary, where women are excluded from being subjects, there were those who raised their voices and demanded visibility and recognition.

It is known that history immortalizes only that which is consistent with the hegemonic model and consequently those women who did not fit well with the female archetype were considered an anomaly or at most, an anecdote of little interest. Hence the importance of this exhibition that reveals the original aesthetic awareness of the great multidisciplinary artist who is Kathryn Hart through the confrontation she maintains with herself and other voices she wants to rescue from oblivion. An exhibition, in short, that combines the beauty and potentiality with which we live globally in these new times of feminism.

Amparo Zacarés Pamblanco Associaciò Valenciana de Crítics d´Art - AVCA