Shrine for Girls

Collateral Event of the 56th International Art Exhibition - la Biennale di Venezia

Although the United Nations passed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, women and girls around the world continue to be among the most vulnerable members of our global society. Often facing violence, repression, and enforced ignorance, this young female populace is subjected to a horrifying existence on earth.

Inside the exquisite sixteenth-century Church of San Gallo, where Bill Viola showed in 2007, New York-based conceptual artist Patricia Cronin has created a shrine in their honor. For over two decades, critically acclaimed artist Patricia Cronin has created compelling works, many with social justice themes focusing on gender. Here, she has gathered hundreds of girls’ clothes from around the world and arranged them on three stone altars to act as relics of these young martyrs. Commemorating their spirit, this dramatic site-specific installation is a meditation on the incalculable loss of unrealized potential and hopelessness in the face of unfathomable human cruelty; juxtaposed against the obligation and mission we have as citizens of the world to combat this prejudice.

The central altar exhibits brightly colored saris worn by girls in India, three of who were recently gang raped, murdered and left to hang from trees. The left altar displays hijabs representing the 276 schoolgirls kidnapped by Boko Haram in Nigeria. And the third altar presents a pile of aprons & uniforms symbolizing those worn by girls at the Magdalene Asylums and Laundries, forced labor institutions for young women without options in the Europe and America as recently as 1996.

Shrines, part of every major religion’s practice, provide a space for contemplation, petition and rituals of remembrance. In this exhibition, dramatically illuminated mounds of their clothing are elevated to the status of art to bring awareness to this urgent crisis, while providing a space to reflect and, hopefully, inspire viewers into action. One framed photograph of each of these three tragic events will accompany this installation proposing a new and reflective dialogue between gender, memory and justice.

The exhibition is located at the Chiesa di San Gallo, a historic-site near the heart of Venetian culture and society, Piazza San Marco. Built in 1581 as an oratory for the Orseolo family hospice, it was enlarged to its present form in 1703. Long deconsecrated, this church – the smallest in the city of Venice, features elaborate stone altars, Corinthian columns, wood panel walls and a checkerboard-patterned marble floor.

Patricia Cronin has presented one-person exhibitions at the Musei Capitolini’s Centrale Montemartini Museo and the American Academy in Rome, Italy; and the Brooklyn Museum, Deitch Projects, Brent Sikkema, White Columns, and Woodlawn Cemetery, New York.

She is the recipient of numerous awards, including the prestigious Rome Prize from the American Academy in Rome, Civitella Ranieri Fellowship, Anonymous Was A Woman Award, Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Grant, and two Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grants. Her works are in numerous collections here and abroad including Kelvingrove Museum and Art Galleries, Glasgow, Deutsche Bank, New York, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC and the Perez Art Museum Miami. She has taught in the Graduate Art Programs at both Columbia University and Yale University and is currently Professor of Art at Brooklyn College of The City University of New York as well as a trustee of the American Academy in Rome.

Ludovico Pratesi, is one of Italy’s most respected Contemporary Art Curators and has organized numerous museum and gallery exhibitions. His is currently the artistic director of Fondazione Pescheria in Pasero, Vice President of Associazione Musei Arte Contemporana Italiana, former President of AICA Italy, and Art Critic for La Repubblica newspaper.

Vai alla guida d'arte di Venice