Monica Lundy: Physiognomy of the Abandoned

Monica Lundy Physiognomy of the Abandoned

Turner Carroll Gallery

Front Cover, Detail: Patient with Leaves, 2021

725 Canyon Road

mixed media with liquid porcelain on linen

Santa Fe, NM 87501

66 x 41.5 x 3"

505.986.9800 turnercarrollgallery.com

Above Image: Monica Lundy in her studio

info@turnercarrollgallery.com

Photo Credit: Daniele Puppi

©2021 Turner Carroll Gallery

Page 20 Image: Monica Lundy in front of Padiglione IV Photo Credit: Daniele Puppi

Essay: Alex McLaughlin Design: Darcy Spencer and Jeffery Kuiper

Back Cover: Detail shot of Angela

Monica Lundy: Physiognomy of the Abandoned Above and beyond her unimpeachable command of the human figure, Lundy balances her extraordinary surfaces and compositional acumen with a go-for-broke, highly physical, even violent, paint application. The resulting works, to my eye, fall in the lineage of Anselm Kiefer, Alberto Burri, Arte Povera, and Neo-expressionism. Rarely do paintings born of such rigorous archival study hold forth with a presence so spontaneous and passionate.

— Richard Speer Monica Lundy: Physiognomy of the Abandoned, is a body of work that focuses on the lives of historical subjects (mostly women) imprisoned in medical wards known historically as insane asylums. The show includes a select number of prints, and her recent constructions of liquid porcelain paintings on panel.

Lundy’s uniquely hands-on, investigative research took her across Europe and North America in search of medical ward archives. Physiognomy of the Abandoned is sourced from various institutions, including the archives of the Manicomio Provinciale Santa Maria della Pietà in Rome and the Bethlem Royal Hospital (often referred to as “Bedlam”) outside London. Lundy notes that one hospital director told her “If you think what happened here was therapy, you don’t understand what happened here.” Women often spent the majority of their lives in these asylums, forcibly admitted for insubstantial acts of resistance. In some cases, most notably during the fascist regime of Mussolini, admittance into what were then called “insane asylums” was primarily a tool for political control over renegade women who were deemed “bad fascists.”

Lundy explains that “the process of travelling somewhere—the journey—meeting with archivists and historians and working with old documents and photographs lends a spark to my creativity.” Centered on her exploration of archives, historic photographs, and records from medical wards for people (specifically women) deemed insane, Lundy retells the narratives of these women through her ability to capture a life-long story in one image. Lundy emphasizes

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that this is especially pertinent because for many of these women the only photographs that have ever existed of them are the ones in the medical archives.

This exhibition also includes a large-scale portrait that points out the lineage of women artists consigned to insane asylums—Camille, which is based on a famous photo of Camille Claudel.

Claudel was a strong, renegade woman. In our contemporary world she is greatly celebrated for this, yet, a hundred years ago, her exemplary personality was held in contempt. In 1913, Claudel was sent by her brother and mother to the first of two asylums where she would spend the rest of her life. Lundy reflects on this reality, saying “these portraits are meant to illuminate this aspect of history, and honor the individuals who endured them.”

For Lundy, the idea of physiognomy has dual meanings. As a supposed science, physiognomy used facial features, structure, or expression, as indicators of ethnic, mental, or character traits. In fact, many of the photographs Lundy uncovered and painted were originally used as references for “insanity” in physiognomic studies.

Yet in her effort to recontextualize these women’s stories with the intent to restore agency and acknowledge their importance, Lundy instills a different type of physiognomy. It is a “judging” that tells the story of strong, renegade women who were abandoned by society and recast by the institutionalized spectacle of insanity. It is the physiognomy of stories that were buried by time and countless attempts to forget.

Lundy describes the trajectory of her practice as being reminiscent of “a network of threads buried by sand—I pull one up and discover where it leads me.” Not only does she find stories, she finds meaning in the stories. Because of this, the fracturing beauty of Monica Lundy’s portraits tell an honest story decades in the making: they are the stories of women who were stripped of autonomy and abandoned, finally finding solace in the agency of Lundy’s paintings.

Richard Speer is a contributing critic for ARTnews, Art Ltd., and Artpulse. His essays and reviews have appeared in The Chicago Tribune, The Los Angeles Times, The New York Post, Newsweek, Salon, and Opera News.

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Red Totem

2021

oil on canvas

60 x 60"

Padiglione IV (Santa Maria della Pietà, Rome)

2021

mixed media with liquid porcelain on panel

84 x 84 x 3"

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Elizabeth (West Riding Lunatic Asylum, U.K.)

2021

mixed media with liquid porcelain on linen 50 x 31 x 3"

William II (Bethlem Royal Hospital, U.K.)

2021

mixed media with liquid porcelain on linen

50 x 31 x 3"

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Patient with Leaves (Surrey County Lunatic Asylum, U.K.)

2021

mixed media with liquid porcelain on linen 66 x 41.5 x 3"

Monica Lundy is an artist gifted with an extraordinaire technique; she is also, notably, a historian, a detective, a time-traveler, and a necromancer. Through assiduous research of archival materials, she unearths vanished paradigms and reconjures them as haunting historical portraiture.

— Richard Speer

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I have marveled at the invention with which she finesses, wrangles, and sometimes flat-out strong-arms disparate media into sumptuous celebrations of time, memory, decay, and transformation.

— Richard Speer

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Angela (Santa Maria della Pietà, Rome)

2021

mixed media with liquid porcelain on panel

28.75 x 37 x 2"

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Natalina (Santa Maria della Pietà, Rome)

2021 mixed media with liquid porcelain on panel

27.5 x 35.5 x 1.75"

Lundy’s best-known paintings commemorate marginalized and disefranchised populations whose names and images she culls from antiquarian ledgers and compendia: mental-hospital patients, sex workers, prison inmates, a host of lost souls and habitués of the demimondes of yesteryear. An enormous sense of empathy and compassion for her subjects radiates from her work with palpable intensity.

— Richard Speer

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Through the séance of art-making, she is able, effectively, to raise the spirits of people and places long since faded into obscurity and empower them to whisper their truths into contemporary ears. The material virtuosity with which she accomplishes this feat is something to behold.

—Richard Speer

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Camille

2021

charcoal and gouache on paper 86 x 59 x 15"

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Giuditta

2018

coffee, burned paper and charcoal on Khadi paper

63 x 43 x 2"

Ida

2017 coffee and gouache on Fabriano paper 30 x 22"

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Harriet

2016

carborundum and gesso print

edition of 25

paper, 54 x 37"

William

2016

carborundum and gesso print edition of 25

paper, 54 x 37"

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Acute Melancholia 2016

intaglio edition of 25

paper, 30 x 22"

Consecutive Dementia

2016 intaglio

edition of 25

paper, 30 x 22"

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About Monica Lundy Influenced by the cultures of her upbringing, Italian-American artist, Monica Lundy, investigates the histories of disenfranchised communities—specifically, women labeled “deviant” for their methods of self-expression. Growing up in Saudi Arabia, a country that is known for gender inequality, Lundy experienced the doubled effects of feeling marginalized as a woman and a foreigner in another country. Because of this, her work prominently includes ideas of universal feminism and collective memory that connect herself to women of all identities, concepts which were frequently used by her mentor and former teacher, Hung Liu.

Awards and Accolades 2017 – Visiting Artists and Scholars Program, American Academy in Rome, Rome, Italy 2015 – San Francisco Arts Commission Grant, San Francisco, CA 2015 – Irvine Fellowship, Lucas Artist Residency Program, Montalvo Arts Center, Saratoga, CA 2010 – Jay DeFeo Award, Mills College, Oakland, CA

Selected Museum Exhibitions Berkeley Arts Center, Berkeley, CA San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art, San Jose, CA Montalvo Arts Center, Saratoga, CA de Saisset Museum, Santa Clara University, Santa Clara, CA The Performance Art Institute, San Francisco, CA The Maritime Museum, San Francisco, CA Root Division, San Francisco, CA Alcatraz Island, U.S. National Park, San Francisco, CA Museo Laboratorio della Mente, Rome, Italy L’ARCA Laboratorio per le Arti Contemporanee, Teramo, Italy

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