Dolls
Photography
After the series “Anime” ( = ‘Souls’), Sara Z. moves on and focuses on something completely different : inanimate objects with human features that she stereotypes and reproduces in series. “Bambole” ( = ‘Dolls’) However, these banal, childlike objects evoke in us intense feelings. All of a sudden, we recall past moments of life, tears, laughter …
What if what we love holds back a bit of our essence?
Everybody changes and leaves a mark on everything they touch. These are the signs that Sara Z. wants to go through, to let them reveal their own story.
The choice of a doll is never simply guided by its exterior aspect, but it is a meticulous search in the markets, the junk shops, the homes of friends and acquaintances. Real emotions guided us along the search. Emotions of other people who hugged, kissed, mistreated or loved their toy.
Photography is Sara’s favourite means to let come out what the eye cannot see. Thanks to the filter of the camera it becomes possible to slash the veil of the exterior appearance. The Dolls are transformed into living protagonists.
The photos reproduce perfect, glossy images: very white background, sharp, direct, intense lights, no shadows, saturated, brilliant colours
Reality emerges only through the bodies that appear to be curved, slumped on themselves, hanging or unnaturally twisted.
Sara Z. ‘s art constantly focuses on what appearance hides, which must be found by digging deeply. If with the series “Anime” this happened during the installation process with “Bambole” it is a sort of physical process.
Sara uses acids to corrode the photographic print and set free what is beyond the simulated perfection. Emotions come out and become visible to our eyes. As in real life people’s reactions are never completely predictable and replicable, in the same way the acid reaction cannot be ‘controlled’ : each work is different from any other. Although they all derive from the same photograph, the emotions that are expressed are unique.
Sara relies then on painting for the last delicate step: her brush guides and tames the smudges making them a pulsating atmosphere.
There is no childhood light heartedness in Sara’s Dolls.
Her works encourage us once again to look inside ourselves. They lead us to question ourselves about our feeling, to ask why, after so many years, a little pile of lifeless material still inspires us … in which, perhaps, we recognize a soul … our soul.