Opening on 5 June from 6pm on the presence of the artist
Ana Silva gained recognition by creating maternity scenes on textile. Then she began collecting raffia bags from Luanda’s markets, diverting their use by embroidering and sometimes assembling them into installations. While giving these objects a second life, she sketched with poetry and by using colored thread, scenes of daily life and moments of intimacy.
Since Portrait de famille, her first exhibition at MAGNIN-A Gallery in 2021, her work has continued to evolve while developing a subject close to her heart: The place of women. Not only an embroiderer, she is also a storyteller giving voice to dreamlike and elliptical narratives.
Recently, Ana Silva has begun working on crinoline, a lighter, more transparent material, creating large-scale works. This shift likely reflects the emphasis she has placed on the environment. In her new series, trees and plants, flowers and birds, animals in the forest and savannah become privileged companions to women, who seem immersed in lush vegetation – connected to the elements by vines, roots and branches. By representing water, fauna and flora, Ana Silva highlights the inexpressible link between femininity and earth. While personifying the nature, female figures symbolize fertility, generosity and even the promise of renewal. In a kind of poetic allegory, and with a good eye for composition, the artist depicts, as in fairy tales, shimmering, almost magical, clothed women whose bodies turn into tree trunks, arms into branches, or hands into flowers.
Beyond these enchanted scenes, the artist invites us to question – without instilling anxiety – the global warming and the excessive use of natural resources (forests, rivers, mines), all of which are political and ecofeminist concerns.
Ana Silva regularly returns to her family’s farm, a few hours’ drive from Luanda (Angola), where she began her artistic practice as a child, to recharge and draw her inspiration. While taking photographs there, she recently discovered that local women act as protectors and guardians. Ana Silva pays tribute to them in this exhibition by representing them as key figures – guardians of memory, holders of initiatory legends, pillars of transmission, bearers of change, initiators of resistance and of many other fights leading to emancipation.
Odile Burluraux
Chief Curator at the
Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris
