PRESS

CULTURA & SPETTACOLI

Lena Herzog: “Sul burrone ma non siamo spaventati”

by Giuseppe Ghigi
April 21, 2024

[translation]

CULTURE AND SHOWS

Lena Herzog: “At the edge of the abyss unconcerned”

THE SHOW

An American photographer, conceptual multidisciplinary artist of Russian origin, Lena Herzog presented at the Bottega Cini of Venice a monograph dedicated to her artistic journey written by two Ca' Foscari University professors: Silvia Burini and Giuseppe Barbieri. Wife of the German director Werner Herzog, Lena is now at home in Venice: two years ago she was at the Art Biennale with “Last Whispers”, sort of catalog of languages at risk in the world as the end of communication between people, and now she's back with the exhibition “Any War Any Enemy” at the Cultural Flow Zone (CFZ) of Ca' Foscari as part of the “Crossroads of Civilizations” festival of humanities.

AMBIGUOUS OPPENHEIMER

as starting point, she had the figure of Robert Oppenheimer, the physicist of the Manhattan Project that resulted with the atomic destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Lena saw Christopher Nolan's film (although her husband Werner did not; Herzog claims, “he doesn't like to go to the movies and prefers to watch the classics at home or, sometimes, independent productions rather than the mainstream Hollywood”). She considers "Oppenheimer” to be an ambiguous film “because it settles us on the side of the character [of Oppenheimer] making us forget the tragic results of his invention; instead, I'm interested in those who died, in those who have suffered because of him ."

UKRAINE

With the war in Ukraine, the nuclear bomb seems to be back in the current affairs with Putin threatening to use it: “I'm Russian, but I am first and foremost an artist, not a pundit” - she declares – “I think that it is not just Putin who is raising the nuclear threat , but also China, Iran, the United States where I live; they all bring it up it as if it were nothing, as if it were a pop corn: we are at the edge of the abyss and we are not scared. When the war broke out in Ukraine I was completely devasted: it's a conflict that should have never started. Perhaps we had to communicate, talk to each other, genuinely understand each other so that we do not end up in the apocalypse.”

The substantial volume published by Skira, features two hundred images by the artist, created in the last three decades: from rock formations “home of the gods” in the Amazon, to the Wonder Cabinets, to the Noman’s land in the Far East, right down to the deformed faces from fear in the last moments of their lives in the mezzotints engravings, the manera nera that Herzog created using an ancient technique in collaboration with the Bottega del Tintoretto in Venice.

TO VENICE

“During “Last Whispers” exhibition at the previous Biennale, I went around the city taking photographs of the statues of lions and saints on the streets of Venice because I was studying the physiognomy of pain and agony. Almost by chance I met Roberto Mazzetto and his incredible artistic workshop in the house that belonged once to Tintoretto in Cannaregio with all these old smells of inks. And the shop that allowed me to combine digital techniques of a more advanced virtual reality with ancient techniques and with matter [rather than files]. I feel the need to connect with the past and to project myself in the future". In “Any War Any Enemy,” the background of the images is the deepest black. The screaming figures seem to have come out of Goya: «I wanted to build figures with cry of pain and agony of their lives’ last moment. There is also a “black mirror” —an ancient Venetian invention. Those who face it, might ask, if this could be the image of our civilization, extinct because of ourselves. Is it our own reflection, now that we have become so accustomed to hatred?”

“My sources of inspiration were unsurprisingly Francisco Goya and Guernica by Pablo Picasso because it is they who had shown us all the horror of war.” Lena Herzog will definitely be back in Venice in two years with the her next exhibition “Joy / Hope”, ”because if we don't have hope, we won’t be able to get out of this collective hypnosis – she says – otherwise, all we have left is the Apocalypse."

Giuseppe Ghigi