Francesca Aldegani | Augmented Perception (AP), Puppetry and Other Animist Practices, puuul, May 17 – June 21, 2024
A Campfire Song of (Fish) Puppets
At the cusp of transformation lies a crucial moment: just before the needle perforates the surface, before the body dives into the waters and before the last touch of the artist births the work, a deep sense of awareness of the powers beyond may come to our attention. Intending to look behind the veil of existence, that feels within reach but cannot be touched, we try to manifest help and create vicarious forms and figures; and so, puppets come into play. These puppets as well as their puppeteers are both dynamically moved and moving in whole and in parts, reciprocally entangled in stillness and movement, lightness and heaviness, thus elevating and grounding each other in loops of self-othering. In their multiplicity, the repetitive interactions constituting puppetry amount to amplifications: Resembling the casting of spells, these physical happenings move matter and connect spirits.
In the works of Francesca Aldegani primordial ideas of puppetry are evoked. Rather than thinking of it as the manipulation of an inanimate object by an animate being, the roles of puppet and puppeteer are fluid, interchangeable and egalitarian. The artist is interested in a feminist materialism as animism, the potentiality of its matriarchal societal forms and the objects they may produce. Such objects can look like egg-shaped fish figurines carved out of stone in the late seventh and early sixth millennia BCE, when hunting, gathering, and fishing were not just pragmatized to survival but raised to feed the soul as well. Supporting the pleas to the gods, these sculptures incorporate attributes of divine ancestresses or mythical women and have long been connected to cult practices. This was the case also in Central Europe, for example in the Danube gorge in the region of the Iron Gates, which today forms part of the boundary between the states of Romania and Serbia. Lepenski Vir, one of Europe’s oldest settlements and a famed archeological site, is situated there.
Yet objects of an animist nature can also look quite differently: The artist visited Lepenski Vir in spring of 2023, where she not only photographed the site, but also felt into the place, transporting its spirit into the exhibition space at puuul in Vienna. The show turned quasi-archeological camp holds varyingly situated stations, encircling an anti-hierarchical field of stories, songs, and intentions. The closest work in relation to the ancient fish sculptures is RIBA (2024) – the title being the word for fish in many languages of the Balkans. The grammatical gender of riba is feminine, revisiting the divine feminine connection manifest in the work’s metaphysical predecessors. We encounter other anti-patriarchal materializations: Mother Tongues, for example, is a totem depicting textile effigies of several heads without much expression except for zipper mouths and tongues sticking out; FIGUR*INNEN Feuerstelle is an installation of smaller puppets, gender-open and more abstract but in similar hues of pink, ochre, sand, browns, and copper as their companions – the colors lend the show its atmospheric scenery; the manifold apparitions titled Baumgeist*innen evoke archaic wood carvings spiked with taxidermal glass eyes.
Francesca Aldegani’s titles are almost apotropaic names, warding off harm and averting evil. A warm feeling, inviting like the soft shine of copper, permeates the space, in tune with a central campfire. Its energy source is fed with sticks alloyed with cooper, resembling magic wands, and thus turning our attention once again to the casting of intentions via puppetry. In order to be helped by the puppets to peek behind the veil for a second and helping them in return, alchemy is required, transmuting what is unclear to reamplify what is intended. In the artistic practice of Francesca Aldegani this poetic alchemy is soft and alluring, yet powerful and political, or, to say it with her own words embroidered onto a textile cloud: We all could use more agency of resistance.