“The Wall – Art in Action”
The profound coherence of Olga Luna’s recent work is seen in the subtle relationship created between masks and gazes, walls and faces. We are permanently on the ‘verge of emptiness’ (or the “Seuil du vide”, to use the title of Kurt Steiner and André Ruellan’s novel), in the act of creating which can only exist through a lucid awareness of the void. Olga Luna’s international art project, The Wall – Art in Action, promoting social integration is not a straightforward event but more of an action forming an integral part of the oeuvre itself. This unusual creation, first seen in Lima, Peru, in 2002, was adopted as an educational project at the Espace Tisot (La Seyne-sur-Mer) between February and June 2005.
Those taking part included children from the workshops, actors with the theatre troupe ‘Attention Fragile’ (in residence at that time), co-ordinators from the youth activities service (Service Jeunesse), young people taking part in the rap writing course led by the Infanterie rap group, and the personnel and faithful supporters of the Espace Tisot arts centre, Louis, Nazim, Eddy, Leila, Séréna, Gisèle, brought together and inspired by Mireille Odin, the centre’s director and the project’s co-ordinator. A wide variety, therefore, of backgrounds, ages and faces. Faces which, under Olga Luna’s keen eye, and with the help of Hichem, Joyce, Stella, Pauline and Sarah, had to be covered with plaster masks. Beauty masks, masks for the theatre, funerary masks – ephemeral shrouds for temporary effigies. A sculptural, carnal experience inviting exchange and intimacy, and very revealing. Stage two was a course for children and adults on working with clay led by Olga Luna and assisted by Hichem Benamara and Jessica Bédouet. The clay faces were made from plaster moulds which were placed in boxes, like alveoli, giving the wall both form and meaning.
“Man is blind, deaf and fragile, like a wall inhabited and eaten away at by an insect” (Baudelaire). “The human face is undoubtedly enigmatic like all the rest, its key forever being forged, remaining incandescent and, more than any other, out of our reach” (André Breton). Olga Luna’s clay wall sculpts and weaves this anxiety and never-ending search for the truth before our very eyes, not to the rhythm of despair, but rather the overlapping of passion and dreams.
Robert Bonaccorsi
June 2006