Area for My Physique: Anu Põder’s retrospective opens in Switzerland

Estonian artist Anu Põder (1947-2013) was fascinated by the fragility of the human physique, exploring its fleeting nature in works at odds with the traditional Soviet artwork which dominated within the second half of the 20 th century. Põder directed her frustration on the Soviet’s occupation of Estonia in 1940 (till independence gained in 1991) inwards, translating an eclectic jumble of supplies – wax, plaster, cleaning soap –  into sculptures which depicted the within of the human physique.

     For the primary time, Põder’s work is now the topic of a retrospective exterior of her native Estonia, with Anu Põder: Area for My Physique, opening at Switzerland’s Muzeum Susch in an exhibition curated by Cecilia Alemani. The museum, expressly created to champion missed worldwide avant-garde ladies artists, will current over forty works relationship from 1978 to 2012.

  ‘I used to be very taken by Anu’s work as a result of I discover it extremely distinctive, highly effective and stunning, particularly on the subject of the sphere of sculpture,’ Alemani tells us. ‘Contemplating that she was working in full isolation in Estonia, a rustic that was annexed to the Soviet Union within the Nineteen Forties and remained largely remoted from the remainder of the world till the early Nineteen Nineties, I discover her visible language very complicated and compelling. Her use of revolutionary supplies at a time when most artists round her have been utilizing bronze and stone, her anti-monumental strategy to figuration, portraying the physique and its fragilities, and at last her masterful means of quoting classical references whereas on the similar time introducing cracks, seams, appendixes and stitches is outstanding and make her some of the highly effective voices working in Jap Europe throughout these years.’

     The exhibition is loosely divided into three components. The primary consists of dolls and mannequins, for the artist’s investigation of the physique, the second the bizarre supplies Põder used to symbolize the physique and the third dissenting her relationship with the senses and need.

 ‘I believe Anu was an extremely expert artist,’ Alemani provides. ‘Her confidence on the subject of supplies, in addition to her skill and openness to experiment with uncommon textures and parts, specifically in case you consider her work from the Eighties, is much more related within the context of an occupied nation, the place shortage of products and artwork provides was quite common. Anu turned this scarcity right into a useful resource, adopting supplies that maybe she wouldn’t have utilized in different circumstances. Her formal language can be visibly influenced by a classical schooling, and but she is ready to embed her figures with the anxieties and preoccupations that she should have felt rising up as a younger lady, single mom of three youngsters, in an occupied nation.’