Samo to veš, da moraš / I want to hold you closer
Ravnikar Gallery space, Ljubljana
2.–18. 10. 2019
Curator: Piera Ravnikar
Photos: Jaka Babnik
Human figures are a central part of the creations of visual artist Mina Fina, who through sketches, drawings and graphic design explores women’s bodies as the building blocks of our identities and emotions in a materialistic form. Roughly sketched faces, bodies with no clear details, wrapped in black and white contrasts, with elegant strokes and soft dotted lines, just like blank spaces, tell a story and offer a view from “another’s” body. The context of the creation immerged from the artist’s early works, painting images of women from pornographic magazines from the 80s and 90s, which acted as visual instructions for how one must look if one wanted to appear attractive, successful and happy. This was followed by the creation of (auto)portraits that pose the following question to the viewer: How to find oneself in a world full of internalised norms and social patterns. Instead of the body being an unfinished project that needs to be made as desirable as possible, the artist thus emphasizes the importance of perceiving the world, womanhood, the media and evaluating it all with respect to society and its values. In other words, the only thing you know is that you must.
