Curatorial Statement

To live and not to be ashamed, to be happy. Maria Bethania said that since Gonzaguinha gave her, “O Que É, o Que É?” (“What is it?, What will be?”) She believes that each time she sings it, it is more useful, more effective, more helpful. It is that invitation and opportunity that Rowan Bathurst offers us through this exhibition: Girl, Woman, Warrior.

Women know that life should be better - and it will be! - but that does not make them unaware, it does not prevent them from repeating the phrase: this life is worthwhile. Bethania sings to the beauty of being an eternal apprentice. Rowan Bathurst presents to us, in her first solo exhibition, the beauty of the wisdom of the eternal apprentices who evolve, resist, progress and remain.

Towns, communities, cities and countries are born from images. There have been many conversations about mental health in recent months globally. The pandemic has led us to physical isolation, resulting in an increase in the time we spend connected through social networks, consuming information and images.

Images that violate us, drive us crazy or make us dream. Images that make us sick, that heal us, or limit us. Images that are not outside, are already inside us and our ways of perceiving.

In the last century, the portrait and nature photographer Imogen Cunningham talked about how everyone is influenced by where and how they live, inside and outside the artistic practice, Through the experience of living between two lands, the United States and Brazil, Bathurst graces us with a rehabilitating gaze, connecting us with the strength and beauty of nature. In difficult times, the return to the origins and the search for the intrinsic beauty in the land we inhabit may be the only meaning we can find in life.

An old tradition for a new time. The feminist universe connects us with the personal psyche of the artist. Between the balance of strength and sensuality, surrounded by flora and vegetation, archaeological pieces, there are deities, athletes and warriors who discover themselves far from masculine logic.

Women today are giving birth to the study of their own genealogy, beyond what they have been told about themselves. Recently, several investigations have pointed to the possibility that the small sculptures of the Paleolithic Venuses could be self-portraits. Self-portraits, without a face, because the face is the blind spot of those who observe their own body.

With immense intuition, Rowan Bathurst revives the old creation, bringing it to the present, in the first person singular through „i vs. i“ and accompanied by „All My Girls Like To Fight.“ These paintings from her most recent Warriors series close a circle that began with the earlier pieces in this show; the drawings „As Long As The Sun Lasts“ and „All At One Point“, followed by the paintings „Convoque Seu Buda: The Venus of Willendorf“ or „Equilibrium Line“. This last piece is a confluence of symbols between past and present that takes us back to a previous series of self-portrait photographs in which the artist confronts her own image in front of mirror playing among vegetation in a place by the sea called Ilha Bela, a brazilian-municipality-oceanic archipelago.

Red. Common thread of the ideology of folklore and a symbol of the fire of victory, the color of danger that embraces life and bends the sky to the rhythm of the celebration of pumping hearts.

The red of danger burns in the journey of the unknown women who seek each other, finding themselves among the others.

From “Alien She“ to the subtle but loaded “Hearts of Stone“, to recent works like “How Much Shall We Bet?“ or “Devotion,“ Bathurst’s portraits portray defined faces that, with aplomb, fix their gazes through erect bodies in postures of attack and defense, women who resist, who are not willing to be shaken or knocked down.

- Maider Errasti