“What’s happening up there? A blue-haired woman is reading by the staircase when she’s suddenly interrupted. A strange, mysterious noise. Should she go check? Of course, she should.”
It’s an unusual introduction to an exhibition: Times 2 was keen to discover more about Liliana Fleri Soler’s engaging new show Fuq, fil Kamra? (or The Room Upstairs) which opens tomorrow.
The exhibition begins with the sculpture of a blue-haired girl sculpture, seated at the bottom of the stairs, ‘greeting’ viewers before they go up to the gallery where the rest of the characters can be found.
Liliana describes how just over a year ago, she climbed up stairs and came to a small room with light entering through a window on one side of the room. “The floor of the room was chequered like a chess board. It reminded me of memories lost in a web of neurones,” she says, “and I said to myself – I have painted this scene before. It was as if I had gone a full circle in my imagination.”
The blue-haired woman is taken from this original work, that painting drawn by Liliana over a decade ago, and which she has borrowed back from a private collection for this exhibition. It’s a picture that stayed lodged in her mind, and served as a trigger for this new solo show, twelve years on. And then, only last month, when the works for the show were nearly complete, she suddenly remembered that room she saw in her mind’s eye: it was a memory from her maternal grandmother’s house in Zebbug.
“I had thoughts and memories of a little girl. Me! I Going up a staircase for a siesta, holding onto my mother’s skirts , a certain fear …. fear of not knowing what is up those steps.”
And Liliana remembered the tiles, the metal balustrade, the light filtering through the shutters in the afternoon sun, and a lullaby too.
Much of the inspiration for this whimsical exhibition comes from Liliana’s own writings of memories from her childhood, especially those rooted in her earliest years. It is also inspired by story and the magical twists and turns that fiction encourages.
“As a child I loved reading and I still do. I love fantasy and mystery, and I still love books for children. The ‘danger’ is that fantastical worlds permeate into reality, but this is essential …it leads to creativity in every way,” she continues, adding that allowing your thinking to drift away from the mundane and the normal results in change, improvements and new possibilities.
“Downstairs the blue-haired girl is sitting and reading,” explains Liliana. “She is startled by a commotion coming from upstairs although she cannot see what is going on. The commotion upstairs might be interpreted as a metaphor of thoughts and dreams or just as plain fun.”
“But before she even starts climbing the stairs, the source of the commotion reveals itself: a hybrid bunny-girl, part woman, part rabbit, comes sliding down the staircase railing. She has the body of a woman, a rabbit’s head, she’s wearing tiny black shorts, knee-length socks, ballerina shoes, a nude torso, and her thighs spread wide,” adds curator Melanie Erixson.
This is Afrodite, who appears to be having great fun. She is a recombinant or chimera and Liliana sees her as a representation of the understanding between humans and nature.
“I always loved animals, those I came across in the garden and in nature,” she explains. “Fish, frogs, insects, lizards, stray cats, rabbits, …”
“Could this creature have escaped from the book the blue-haired woman was reading? Books can be dangerously fun, and this one seems to contain more than just aloof stories.”
Having climbed the stairs to the upstairs gallery you will then meet a series of figurative sculptures. Each is a character from one of the illustrations on the surrounding walls, the protagonist in their own stories “which are separate and yet interconnected. The viewer is feel free to formulate their own stories and connections,” Liliana smiles.
“My sculptures always originate as paintings or illustrations. When I’m making the sculptures they are always in that particular time and place, and then they ‘step out’ and become three dimensional!”
The stylised mixed-media sculptures – of curious characters with elongated limbs and a fairytale charm – vary in size from 50 cm to 90 cm tall. Each is made from a copper armature, paper, clay, textile, paint, and varnishes which, combined, creates a hard, durable and yet versatile material, and every detail counts.
Much of the fabric used in these sculptures is deeply personal, sourced from a cherished chest filled with textiles including those embroidered by hand, and lace made by Liliana’s grandmother’s aunt. These had been collected over many years, during not only her own childhood but her mother’s and even grandmother’s too. Liliana remembers from when she played dressing-up.
Other elements in the show include the red balloon, the abstract oversized bouquet, and the all-seeing eye, like dreams or fleeting thoughts, or fragmented parts of a story.
“The red balloon can have different meanings for me. It can mean a connection with air and also dreams and hope,” Liliana explains. “The all-seeing eye for me is nature which although we forget this, it is observing us and reacting to what we do. It regenerates while we destroy ourselves.” Flowers, she adds, are nature’s sexual organs and organs of regeneration so a bouquet represents an orgy of nature!
Visit Fuq, il-kamra by Liliana Fleri Soler at Il-Kamra ta Fuq in Mqabba from May 25 – Jun 8
