"Because I am the first and the last, I am the venerated and the despised one, I am the prostitute

and the saint. I am the bride and the virgin. I am the mother and the daughter "

Hymn to Isis, from the Oxyrhynchus Papyrus, 2nd century BC. C.

From the beginnings of humanity, the woman was invoked,  enerated and adored as a goddess, through countless forms, names and symbols, with the archetype of Magna Mater. The cult of the Great Mother, goes back to the Neolithic or even to the Paleolithic, and refers to a primordial divinity that embodies the fundamental aspects of human life.

The  mother, mother of all mothers, is the Earth, whose vocation is to generate, whose dark and humid appearance, recalls the womb and, therefore, the womb that generates life. Its power is in water, stones, animals, hills, trees and flowers. The faculty of procreation assigned to it by nature, has endowed the woman with a boundless power. Woman is in fact the one who gives life. Woman is the one who creates. According to this paradigm, the link between women and motherhood appears inseparable, a concept that was rooted six thousand years earlier with the birth of the ancient patriarchal culture. For these reasons, the existential experience was strongly marked by the presence of the mother figure in a broad sense.

Sigmund Freud, father of psychoanalysis, investigates family relationships and in particular the "Oedipal complex": the relationship between mother and son, which he himself defines as a necessary need for both sides, almost dependent.

A strong umbilical cord, able to keep alive the maternal love, sometimes indestructible. The mother, in her golden aura, embodies the fundamental values of the family, of feeling, strength, courage, sacrifice, hope and perfection.

She’s the one who plants and nourishes the first seeds of good within each of us, and teaches us to love the other.

She’s the mirror in which we look at ourselves to understand what we were yesterday and what we have become today.

But the love story between mother and son is not always easy. It’s often made of contrasts, devastation and dismay.

What Freud in psychoanalytic terms calls Oedipus unresolved. It is, undoubtedly, a bond that has inspired artists of all times, who have chosen to give the mother figure a central role in its totality. Penelope, symbol of unshakable fidelity, exemplary wife and mother, emblem of love and hope for the poet Virgil, Medea, example of an assassin mother, uncontrolled and ruthless, for the poet Euripides. It is the "Mater Dulcissima" for Ungaretti, the emptiness at every step for Montale, the mother courage for Manzoni and Brecht, "The Queen of the Night" for Mozart, the intrusive mother for Jane Austen. It is the mother country for Foscolo, the Mother Nature friend for Pascoli, or enemy for Leopardi, the mother tongue for Dante, the Isola Madre for Flaubert. We could lose ourselves in a thousand other examples, mythological, literary, novelistic, but they would not be enough to strip the woman of her complex maternal role to expose all the other multiple meanings that it represents. She is a universal concept, difficult to express in words. She is strength, resilience, creative and destructive nature, she is salvation, she is hope, she is determination. She is the sun and the moon.

M.A.D.S., with the project MATER «Reconditis Oedipus», in the wake of this text, intends to draw the attention of all artists, to dig into their memories, to push them to engage with the subject, each one bringing their own sense and their interpretation of motherhood. Whether it’s nature, whether it’s family, whether it’s love, it’s necessary to dig into us, understand who we are, bring back the past. The search is oriented on that vital force, capable at the same time to give life and to destroy it; to love and to be loved, on that intimate, contrasted and difficult relationship. The aim of this project is therefore to push the interlocutor to give shape to love, through the realization of an unpublished work. Who is ready to share this feeling with humanity? Who is ready to take off his ego and open up to the world?

My painting number 04 is shown in the exhibition.

Review artwork number 4

Exhibition "MATER" Gallery M.A.D.S. Milan 13 - 17 November 2020

The paintings by Alexandra Köhl express the multiplicity of the artist’s feelings through a skillful use of color, which is spread with large and scratched strokes and becomes the undisputed protagonist of her canvases. At first glance, her artwork Picture number 4 could appear similar to her other abstract paintings, due to a use of color that defines the space and Alexandra’s tendency to mark the composition with a number but not with a title.

Nevertheless, this work introduces an unusual detail for the artist: the figurative element. By interpreting the concept chosen for this exhibition, Alexandra introduces the theme of motherhood placing two figures in the middle of the composition and making them the focus of the painting. Tight in an embrace that reminds a dance, they are protected by something like a domed ceiling, whose form reminds a house or, extending etaphorically its meaning, that kind of protection and safety that only motherly love can give. The artist reproduces her inner sensations through a technique full of vibrant and energetic brushstrokes, that reminds the painting movement of Action Painting. Just like the artists of the New York School, Alexandra translates the creative strength expressed by her hand on the canvas into an image. The magical atmosphere typical of her paintings, which pervades even Picture number 4, derives exactly from this unusual and instinctive creative method. When the artist starts painting, she doesn’t know in advance the result of her composition to the point of being astonished once finished. Alexandra’s style reveals her ability to perfectly combine abstractionism, which reveals itself in the choice of tones, that create an elegant visual experience, and action painting, evident in the use of an emotional and instinctive gesture.

Art Curator Marta Graziano