Artists: Michèle Pagel

 

What happens at home stays at home. 

 

Within our own four walls everything is possible. One could even create a little peaceful society. Nevertheless what so commonly succeeds relationships, families, family homes, once established is anything else than „everything possible“. Of course, as soon as the distribution of roles is established, troglodytic violence, despotism, power-games, home made religion, sexual abuse and abuse of any kind evolve in an astonishing multitude of forms. But still, it is only one and the same content: a lack of fantasy in romance, a home grown lack of capacity. 

 

Pagel translates the well established patterns of domestic violence, psychological violence, state violence and systematic abuse into objects, that bear this very mean and common kind of romance inside of them. Colourful household objects made out of brick-clay, that humourously suggest, how common and omnipresent caveman violence is, and how painfully dull the love behind must be - on the one hand. On the other hand she approaches the same theme with sculptures, that document the circumstances of - and the impacts on - their own growth within their form. Like living creatures do. They carry the insignias of their own resistance, stubbornness and their strong will to live like tree-branches that bend fences. Pagel observes the tragedies of development and growth with the mind of a poet and the eyes of a sculptor.

 

Information provided by „TyNeOdna“:

•        Domestic violence has affected more than 16 million women in the past year

•        38% of women in Russia have experienced verbal domestic violence in their lifetime

•        20% of women have been physically abused in their lifetime

•        Only 10% of victims go to the police

•        Laws against domestic violence exist in 127 countries, but not in Russia

•        Protective orders are provided in the legislation of 124 countries, but not in Russia

•        Russia is among the 18 countries whose laws protect women from violence the worst