20 July – 24 September, 2017 Room 4. First floor
Mythology is a powerful element that shapes humanity. Old legends spanning millennia have created heroes and religions, defined beliefs and became deeply embedded in our universal consciousness. I have chosen two stories from different cultures anddifferent times and continents, as the subjects for my current exhibition, LEGENDS.
The first group of works is inspired by the myth of Medea, the archetype of the abused woman taking revenge on her victimiser. As with most myths, various interpretations exist regarding the murder of her children. Euripides was among the first to attribute the deaths of Medea’s children to her own hand, although other versions abound.
In these mixed media works on paper I focused on Medea’s plight, by concentrating on her face and thoughts. What went on behind those eyes turned inwards, contemplating the destruction of her life, her security and her sense of belonging? The ghostly shadows of the children she is about to lose to another woman are a haunting and surreal presence. The daydream of a life with her beloved, for whom she gave up everything, becomes a garden of flowers growing from her head. Medea’s story has all the elements of human tragedy: love, betrayal and the yearning for justice.
The second part of the exhibition entitled The Cannibal Birds Suite,consists of works inspired by the initiation practice of the Hamatsa secret society of the Kwawaka’wakw nation of British Columbia, Canada. As a new immigrant to Vancouver, I was fascinated by the majestic art of the indigenous people of the West Coast. The resultwas a large surrealistic body of works that included elements of native culture within the flora and fauna of the environment where these people have lived for centuries.
An important element in this series is the forest,a symbol of the soul’s wanderings in search of truth. Cannibal Birds lurk among the trees; they are the demons thathumans have to face in order to find who they really are.
Although at first glance these two bodies of work seem to have nothing in common, the invisible thread of the search for truth that connects them, gave me a deeper understanding of the world we live in. (Pnina Granirer)
Pnina Granirer was born in 1935 to a Jewish Rumanian family. She moved to Israel in 1950 in the aftermath of atrocious historical circumstances, which included surviving Nazism and shortly thereafter, the so-called “dictatorship of the proletariat.” Twelve years later, she moved to Vancouver where she has lived ever since.
Always resorting to a great variety of media and techniques, in the late seventies Pnina Granirer’s work took a turn that would bring it significantly closer to Surrealism. Between 1978 and 1981, she was inspired by the landscape and rich native cultures of the Pacific Northwest which brings us a vision that Agustin Espinoza would have described as “integral”, that is to say, as poetic and non-realist.
Totemic elements and Kwakiutl masks are incorporated into the series on anthropophagic birds. These mythical birds haunted the forests where people went in search of their song, or their inner being. (Jose Miguel Perez Corrales, professor of Philology, Tenerife, writing in Surrealismo: El Oro del Tiempo).
PNINA GRANIRER – biographical notes
Canadian artist Pnina Granirer has exhibited widely over a long life in art, spanning some sixty years. Her works are found in numerous private and public national and international collections in Canada, France, Israel, Spain, Chile and Costa Rica. Her book, Light within the Shadows; a painter’s memoir, was published in May 2017.
