LINDA PAPPAGALLO
Since 2014 I have been exploring the use of photographic collages to express imaginaries, spaces, political, social, environmental and historical questions, and surreal wonder. As a result of this exploration I have not only been able to visually express my dream-scapes, world-views, utopic desires but I have also been able to convey important messages without the use of logic and language. The surrealist movement has been hugely important to me personally and as a result I initiated the Middle Eastern Surrealist collective (now dormant) with talented artists from Syria, Egypt, Tunisia, Jordan, and Italy.
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I have exhibited/published at:
(2018) // Germany// Fusion Festival Music for the Arab underground re:evolution
(2017)//Italy//Ghirba Biosteria Reggio Emilia
(2016)//Tunisia// Journal de la Medina
(2015)//Tunisia// 2nd edition of CHOUFTOUHONNA - The International Feminist Art Festival of Tunis where I presented Femmes fatales en fleur: L’Orient créé par l’Occident
(2015)//Tunisia//Rencontres de Ghar el Melh
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In this page I showcase some examples of these photo-scapes
Femmes fatales en fleur: L’Orient créé par l’Occident
This series presented at the International Feminist Art Festival in Tunis (2015) depicted classic photographs of naked "Arab" women from the 1800s. I used real flowers to cover and decorate Orienatlist photographs of women - who have "participated" in the orientalist reverie. The flowers represent the respect restored, the "forgiveness" that is owed to objectified "oriental" women.
Depicting Synesthesia
Based on photographs taken by Michel Renaudeau in Niger. The “sensations” given by the images are reproduced by the colour palettes. Synesthesia, is where the stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to automatic, involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway –
seeing music, smelling colours etc...
How can you depict synesthesia?
Perspectives
Playing on perspectives to convey different messages regarding perceptions. The image on the left for instance represents caged birds in between a pictorial depiction of a human mind. The quote at the bottom of the image reads an proverb in arabic: “We put the bird in a cage because his guilt is his beauty”
Desertscapes
This series is inspired by British explorer, Wilfred Thesiger, and his travels across Rub' al Khali , the largest contiguous sand desert in the world found between Yemen, Oman, Saudi Arabia and the UAE. These historic photographs are his own, taken between 1945 and 1950 and subsequently donated to the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford.
Colours, patterns and the life sciences are the inspirations behind this series.
Anima
Exploring anima - the unconscious feminine side of a man: ideas of womanhood, motherhood, female strength and fertility. The image in the center for example is entitled “sage woman”. Sage leaves are encased by geometric patterns forming triangles, a symbol of female strength. The berber Moroccan woman has sage coloured eyebrows. Sage being a herb linked to the nervous system, memory and wisdom and the eyebrows representing muliebrity.
The image on the right represents two berber Tunisian women baking tabbouna bread in clay constructed ovens. The shape
of the tabbouna bread loaves placed in the basket at the center of the image recall the labia, fertility, a blossoming rose flower