I Santi, a viso aperto

When I put Cynthia Karalla on the TWA flight to Italy in the summer of 2001, all she carried was a digital camera and her laptop computer. She was on her way to creating work for an Italian exhibition planned for September. She called me from the airport and I thought to ask her why she wasn¹t carrying anything to exhibit. She told me that she was going to start working as soon as she got on the plane. "I need to stay liquid," she said.

She explained that carrying something from America would contextualise her Italian exhibition and her goal was to find something new to the place. Cynthia Karalla has worked with me on series of projects, and I can think of no better manner of describing her philosophy of work and life than staying present in the moment.

It is rare for an artist to have the talent and technical expertise to maintain such a level of mobility in his or her work. What it requires is a forging of vision and talent through the physical body resulting in an authentic body of work that both respects and reflects its' origin. In order to obtain the images of ‘l Santi,’ Cynthia had to climb above and below forbidden surfaces, shoot through glass in short, physically penetrate the veil that the Catholic Church uses to cloak the occult mysteries with its particular brand of iconography.

The result is a revelation. Artists explore external subject matter in order to enter more fully into our inner psychology. When we come up against institutions like the Catholic Church, we aren¹t merely being rebellious; we are truly trying to understand our origins. Any child that grows up Catholic has the sacrificing lives of the saints embedded in his psyche. It is the Christian saints that become our early role models. When we pray, we appeal to the saints for guidance and expect their benevolence to enhance our lives. Yet, while the Church requires that we accept these figures in order to practice a devout faith, we are never permitted to question the complexity of their lives. So, it turns out that the arts provide what religion can¹t a method of trusting our gut, which ultimately strengthens what is inside.

The seeds planted on that flight have resulted in a series that is very much rooted in the Italian soil. The deconstruction of Christian iconography is not for the faint hearted. Working with symbols is laden with dangers, not only because of the obvious pitfalls of the collective unconscious during the making of the work. There is also the aftermath, when these symbolic figures that have been taken for granted during two thousand years of Christianity are suddenly presented in a new light. The work requires a Karalla liquidity that plunges forward into the future even as it stays fully present in the moment.

It is in this spirit that ‘I Santi, a Viso Aperto’ meet the public on their own soil, yet in a very different context than expected.