For the following I asked Sara if she wanted to do an interview with me: 

Luna Maluna Gri: Tell me a bit about yourself and your work.

Sara Ziai: Hi, my name is Sara. I’m 17years old, living in Vienna. I dropped out of High School last year and made the decision to rather invest my time into my art and mental health. Throughout the pandemic, I created and improved my own art style. I also started to tattoo people.

LMG: How and why did you start painting?

SZ: I’ve always liked to draw, but when I was around 13 I really started to consciously create art. I think my sensitivity is a big part of my artistic identity. I am convinced that there is an artist in each of us, but that some have practically no choice but to act out that side to the outside world. Due to the many influences in which school played a major role for me, this side came more and more to light and was like a door from reality for me.

LMG: What role does painting play for you?

SZ: For a very long time I was afraid of not being an artist enough and of not wanting this choice of career enough, but over time I realized that it is natural and healthy to not just lean on one pillar. for me, it is impossible to limit myself to just one of my hobbies. painting is one of the many things that make me myself. Without painting, I wouldn’t be me.

LMG: What does your creating process look like?

SZ: Most of the time I work without a sketch and just by feeling. I try not to attach too much importance to flawlessness because I like it when you can see that it wasn’t machine-made. That is why I personally prefer sticking to classic painting and not digital art. I like to listen to good music when I’m painting. When I feel comfortable and relaxed, it is also reflected in my art.

LMG: What inspires you?

SZ: Basically my family and how I grew up inspire me the most. When it comes to art, Jagonte is a great inspiration because I just love his work. I find smaller artists with maybe not that many connections in the art world, inspiring. I love to see how these artists often reach and influence many more people.

LMG: Is there something you want to change about the art world? If yes, what and why?

SZ: For me, art is so subjective. I hate to see art getting judged. In the first week at art school, I was asked why I was here at all and was told I wasn’t a bit creative. Theory can be learned but I think the subjective negative thoughts of others actually only prevent you from trying out more and discovering yourself and your art.

LMG: What do you think is/are the role/-s of artists and art in our society?

SZ: I think that art plays a very important role in our society since for me art is something very personal, I think that it can lead people back to themselves. People have the need to express themselves in some form and that is where art plays a major role.

LMG: What artist/artists would you like to meet (dead or alive) and if you had one question, what would you ask them?

SZ: I think when it comes to that question it’s between Kanye and Salvador Dali. I’m a big Dali fan and I’m sure I could think of hundreds of questions, but I think I’d rather ask Kanye West a question that would probably have less to do with his art and more with his being as an artist with his mental state.

LMG: What does a normal creating day look like for you?

SZ: When I feel that today would be a good day to create something I try to avoid negative influences which could be social media, for example. I try to get myself into a calm relaxed mood and just start. Most of the time I want to finish one piece at a time, so it rarely happens that I start painting a canvas and then leave it for days to finish it.

LMG:  What was your reason for becoming an artist (if there is a specific one)?

SZ: I don’t want to say that it is “my destiny” to be an artist, but I do think that creating art for people is more of a need than a decision.

LMG: Do you think there is something you can bring to this world through your work as an artist which you couldn’t in any other field of work?

SZ: I was always afraid of the future and decisions. Meanwhile, I trust that everything I need will happen as it should. That doesn’t mean that I’ll sit around and wait, but I think trust in the future is very important. I notice that my attitude towards art can take away worries for many people around me. 

Instagram:  https://www.instagram.com/saralookslikeahorse/ 

Copyright to all artworks and photos: Sara Ziai

• Born 8^th of December 1864 in Fère-en-Tardenois, France

• Died 19^th of October 1943 in Montdevergues, France

Camille was the oldest of three children, her brother called Paul and her sister Louise. From age five to twelve she was taught by the ‘Sisters of Christian Doctrine’, a religious order of the Roman Catholic Church for women. 

From age twelve on she started working with clay, mostly making sculptures of the human form. 

With time she expanded her artistic education with literature and old engravings.

Camille’s mother never approved of Camille’s, as she said “unladylike” wish to become an artist. Her father, on the other hand, was supportive of his daughter’s wish, and eventually, when Camille was sixteen, she, her brother, and mother moved to Montparnasse (known as the art district of Paris) where Camille started studying sculpture at the Académie Colarossi. Her father stayed back home, working to support them. 

There she rented a studio in 1882, together with three other female artists; Jessie Lipscomb, Emily Fawcett and Amy Singer.

At the Académie she studied with Alfred Boucher, who soon became her mentor. 

After three years of teaching Boucher moved to Florence and his friend Auguste Rodin took over teaching his class. Soon after Camille and Auguste met they fell in love with each other and started a relationship which was pretty tumultuous. 

Starting with Auguste being married and being reluctant to ending his marriage.

When Camille’s mother got to know of their affair and her being against her daughter being an artist in the first place, she forced Camille to leave the family home. 

After some further difficulties in their relationship, Camille ended it, after her having an abortion in 1892.

Due to sex-based censorship and the sexual elements in her work, Camille was not able to get the funding to realise a lot of her ideas. 

Since her working as an artist was aggravated due to the censorship, she partly was depending on Rodin for maintenance allowance, especially since her father’s death enabled her remaining family to cut all her allowance. 

Though she always kept going and created some of her best work from 1889 on with ‘The Waltz’, ‘The Mature Age’, ‘Clotho and Fortune’ and ‘The Implorer’.

In 1903 she had her first exhibition at the ‘Salon de Artistes français’ and from then on regularly exhibited there or at the ‘Salon d’Automne’.

In 1905 Camille was diagnosed with schizophrenia, showed signs of paranoia and destroyed a lot of her sculptures. 

After her father’s death in 1913 she was not informed about his death and eight days later was admitted to the psychiatric hospital of Ville-Évrard by her brother Paul. 

On her admission form it read that she was admitted “voluntarily” but the form was only signed by her brother and a doctor, and not also herself. 

Since she was clear headed most of the time, the doctors tried to convince her brother and their mother that she did not need to be in the institution but they decided to keep her there. 

Her mother also forbade her to get mail from anyone else than her brother. 

In 1914 she was relocated to the Montdevergues Asylum at Montfavet, to be safe from the advancing German troops (World War I).

The staff in the asylum regularly proposed to her family for Camille to be released but her mother refused every time. 

In 1929 Camille’s friend Jessie Lipscomb visited her and afterwards insisted that it was not true that Camille is “insane”. Same as Rodin’s friend Mathias Morhardt. 

A lot of authors nowadays believe that, other than many thought, it was not Rodin who was jealous of Camille’s genius, but her brother Paul. And he and her mother, who never forgave her for choosing “immorality” with becoming an artist, conspired to ruin her and then keep her confined in a mental hospital. Also her younger sister Louise was jealous of her since she wanted her sister’s inheritance.

Camille died on the 19^th of October 1943 in Montfavet, after being confined there for thirty years.

Her Artwork.

“You find me at work; excuse the dust on my blouse. I sculpt my marble myself.”

Camille got known for her sculptures, which was also the main medium in which she worked, but she also painted.

The first work I saw from her was the sculpture ‘La Valse’ (‘The Waltz’) which touched me a lot. 

This and all her sculptures are so soft in a way that you almost forget that they are made of hard materials like stone. But they are powerful at the same time and hold and express a lot of emotion.

They also have a certain fluidity, as if they are really alive and moving, and not the numb bodies sculptures can often come across as.

Her paintings also are made with the same purity of emotion, devotion and softness.

She often portrayed sexuality in her work and had a rather symbolic and sensual style.

For me Camille’s work is one of the purest expression of emotions I have ever seen. It’s rawness sometimes almost hurts. It’s touching to the soul but there also lies a tremendous power within that. 

To show who you are, your heart and how you feel fully and unapologetically. And that’s one of the bravest and most powerful things you can do.

Camille for me is one of the most empowering women and artists I know and the same goes for her artwork, which touches me to my heart like no other.

For the following I asked Evangeline if she’d want to do an interview with me:

Luna Maluna Gri: Tell me a bit about yourself and your work. 

Evangeline: Hi, I’m Daniela Bonanomi. Through social networks communication, I often use the name of Evangeline but I’m still trying to figure out what kind of artistic and personal connection I have with her, I still don’t know if it’s a strengthening of my creative personality or a way to veil my identity on online platforms or just an alternative name to mine. For now, I don’t define myself as an artist but generally, as creative, it’s a process that I’m still working on. Getting back to me, I’m a life enthusiast of 21 years old who lives in a village in the countryside in the province of Milan. At the moment I study Cultural Heritage Sciences at the Università Degli Studi of Milan to which I fund my love for art, flowers, people, and many other powerful things. My work is essentially a hysterical and frantic summary of what I live, what I feel, I don’t have a precise artistic line. I basically do a lot of projects just for myself and over the last two years, I’ve started to realize some of them in collaboration with other artists, especially people who work and create in the musical field. I don’t identify myself in any type of artistic field in particular even if the essential source of my creative drive I found in the practice of collage and, in close correlation to it, in photography, even if I am not a person who feels the need to channel into one street indeed perhaps the basic concept is precisely that the roads I want to take are all of them.

LMG: How and why did you start creating art?

E: Since I was a child, I have always felt the need to release certain energy that I felt inside. I’m not exactly what you might call an emotionally stable person, since early childhood I have suffered a lot of panic attacks and anger management problems with which unfortunately I still have to live now. I have always felt a strange confusion and tension inside of me and I have always looked for various ways to vent it and exploit it in something that would give a result that could make me feel more concrete emotions. 

LMG: What role does creating art play for you?

E: Art, creativity, the aesthetic and literary expression of interiority have given space to this process of concretization. I am not talking about a “putting in order”, a resolution of my confusion, but a way to make it tangible, to be able to live through an experience, and perhaps also to understand and contemplate it better. to get to answer your question: During my adolescence, I started to keep diaries, but I realized that the right way for me to keep a diary was not through writing, narrative, but through the gathering of images, colors, shapes, tickets, receipts, messages that I collected and once accumulated in a big box I started to compose them through the pages. I, therefore, understood that the process of collage could best vent the frenetic confusion that represents me.

LMG: What is your experience with the art word and is there something you want to change about it?

E: My experience with the art world can be said to be very diverse and in some ways contradictory. Essentially I believe that the problem lies in the relationship between the aesthetic and philosophical sense of art and what is the real art market. Indeed, there is art, the contemporary market and in the middle, there is the academic world. I can say more or less that I have experienced all three of these universes, as diverse as they are united, especially in the context of the globalized society in which we live today. I always thought that human beings invented the concept of art to try to create a safe universe. In his own evolution man has always had a tendency to reorder, to aggregate, to try to give meaning. Art is everything that surrounds us and everything that we people are. Is in nature and in our thinking, in our feelings, and in our identity.

 I think that the human being is a creature as complex as it is extraordinary, so as to have too much energy that in a balanced social and political system it is not possible to support all this energy. If art is the fullest and most intense expression that a person can express of himself, in an ordered system you can do nothing but channel it as if it were something abnormal. what therefore more natural for us can become an exception, an alternative inspiration out of normality. I hope I’ve made myself a little clear.. It is as if to hold the beauty of an immense flower field they took off all the petals. 

The problem of the academic and commercial world of today’s art is that this so primitive concept is transformed into something of elitists. In our society it seems that to be able to express an opinion about something that is institutionally considered artistic if you must be a connoisseur. Of course, the study and deepening of the art history is fascinating and absolutely something that enriches the experience and the artistic enjoyment an additional power, I could not say otherwise being myself a university student of cultural heritage, but this knowledge and awareness does not detract from the artistic experience of any other person. not to enter into the binding discourse of the exclusivity of contemporary art galleries.

LMG: What do you think is the role of artists and art in our society?
E: Especially in this difficult historical period that we are experiencing, it seems that people, especially those who should be concerned about the thing politically, have forgotten the importance of the role that the artist has in society. Connecting to the previous discourse, the artist is someone who, from the primitive times, takes responsibility for creating something that represents the community, the person who has the deep and particular tension towards life that speaks to the presents but also to the future of its own contemporaneity through the art of memory, whether written or visual. the artist is the one who represents the continuity of the human being as such, the one who guarantees us the authenticity of our subjectivity, the immortality of sensitivity. Evidence of the progressive blindness towards this essential resource can be observed in the way the Italian government is managing the cultural sphere during the health emergency. with the arrival of the pandemic did not hesitate for a moment on the closure of theaters, museums, cultural places. and after a year these places are left abandoned. Culture has been treated as a frivolity, something useless to survival. But who are we without our culture? Everything we breathe, everything we live, how we behave, how we speak, how we express ourselves, is culture. we are our culture and our art

LMG: What does your creating process look like?

E: My creating process starts essentially from my life and what I’m living in that moment. For my journals I use clippings of magazines that I have in the house, images that hit me, flyers and memories that keep everything in some boxes around my room, I’m a bit ‘a serial hoarder, I keep anything. It often happens that I get to compose them when I have days of depression, I am a rather hyperactive person and I always feel like wasting my time, so when I realize that I have a day where I will not have the strength to leave my room I put on a record, I open my boxes and leave it for this type of work so I never have a premeditated project, it is very based on the flow of consciousness.

 As far as photography is concerned, it’s almost the opposite process. to realize a photographic project it takes much more time, often even months, because I believe in art at 360 degrees so when I speak of photography I also mean all the aspects that concern it: meaning, message, palette, subject, reference, makeup, styling and even post production that often also results in collage. 

I believe in the continuous renewing power of art, the collage represents a lot of this vision of mine, taking and recreating infinite times something always new but that still brings a memory of the previous one. In recent years, thanks to a dear friend and musical artist Matteo Brioschi, I had the opportunity to explore a new approach to figurative art, the one associated with the image of artists in the musical world. I mention this because it is a beautiful way to exemplify what I said before, the encounter between art and people. Art is never a one-sided communication, it is a meeting of many sensibilities and also many different languages, such as figurative and musical. In this specific field the artistic communication is not based only on my personal project but are two different projects that merge and that must be interchanged: mine and that of the artist I represent. is a great opportunity to enrich each other and go further and further. 

During this lockdown period, I also had the opportunity to experience the self-portrait. I have always tended over the years to hide behind my work, I have always tried to make myself seen through external subjects. Last April I took courage to realize my first introspective series. This is a series of simple shots entitled “Forced Peace with Ourselves and Our Bodies” It’s about thinking that the unnatural self-reclusion of our entire society and the prohibition of contact with other human beings has led us to a reckoning with ourselves that has not happened to human beings for centuries. 

This situation has made us find ourselves far from the eyes and the touch of all, alone with ourselves, alone with our bodies, with which to survive we are forced to make peace, a truce. a globalized society has always taught us to avoid contact with our ego, a contact for the sake of himself, a dialogue, has always pushed us just to compare with others. After that big step for my creative journey I started to experiment a lot, especially with body painting and I hope to be able to cultivate this thing again. 

LMG: What inspires you?

E: What inspires me is people and their energies, whether they are positive or negative. In correlation with this, I have been thinking for a long time about projects related to more political and activist topics, which has always interested me and has always been close to my heart since I was a child. I believe that this is the art that requires the most time because strong and important messages must be given with confidence. Also in this great people and artists influence me and I am grateful. 

LMG: Is there a particular artist which inspires or influences you ?

E: One of these is definitely Dacia Maraini. A revolutionary and extraordinary woman. Dacia Maraini is a writer, poet, essayist, playwright and screenwriter who in 1973 founded the Teatro della Maddalena in Rome, one of the first feminist theaters: strong, direct, political, expressive. People like her push me every day to trust humanity and power in art. I do not have an artistic field that I prefer to others, but the theater is definitely something that has always fascinated me and that I am deepening a lot in my studies, especially that of ancient Greece.

LMG: Anything you lastly want to say?

E: Finally I want to say that I still consider myself very immature in my creative and artistic path, especially because I have always done everything by myself and there are still countless things to learn, but surely this is what makes the world of art electrifying, never arrived, it is a continuous journey of rediscovery of themselves and others. Thank you so much for listening to what I have to say. I hope you all have beautiful energies in your life.

Art Uncovered is also a Patreon series that provides a membership for $5 that includes more content and interviews just like this one.

Copyright of all artwork and photos is by Evangeline

Instagram: Daniela (@ewangeliine) • Instagram-Fotos und -Videos 

Behance: Daniela Bonanomi on Behance 

I watch many movies irrespective of the languages, time, and style. It helps me to improve my perspective in my life. More people treat cinema as entertainment. But it’s not.

Cinema is the art of visual storytelling. Characters are the medium to express the thoughts and ideas of an artist to the people. That’s what every art is supposed to be.

But more than any art, cinema struggles to give the perception of women. Let’s see why that is?

Uncovering the Role of Women in Films

No one can deny the fact that cinema is a huge market and has more demand than other art. It also reaches everyone widely. So it is important to uncover the role of women in films.

Females are only portrayed as attractive pieces or rewards to the male protagonist of the film. They never got the chance to lead the stories equally as men.

The number of women in films may vary from different film industries like Hollywood, Indian cinema (Bollywood), South Korean films, but it is clear that women are not considered equal to men.

Let me prove it to you.

I came to know about this test called the Bechdel test which tells us whether the women in films are portrayed in the right manner just by asking the following 3 questions.

1. Does the film have at least 2 named female roles?
2. Do they talk to each other in the film?
3. And this talk isn’t about the men like love interest?

If you ask these questions, the answer surprises you. Most of the films don’t fail to pass the Bechdel test.

Try to check whether your favorite films pass the Bechdel test.

The Bechdel test is not the holy grail method to find the importance of women in films. But it indicates gender inequality in the film industry.

Here are some movies that fails in the Bechdel test

• Lord of the Rings trilogy
• Superhero movies like The Avengers
• Toy Story 1&2
• Slumdog Millionaire

The main purpose of the Bechdel test is to measure the active presence of women in films, so it has some flaws in finding feminist movies.

Let’s take Avatar as an example. Although the film has two main characters Neytiri and DR Grace Augustine, they didn’t speak to each other. Yet they are feminist characters and Neytiri is the one who kills the antagonist.

So what I am gonna do is to change the question slightly to find feminist movies. It will help us to dig deeper into this gender inequality issue in the films, I want you to add this criterion to that question number 1.

• Does the film have at least 2 female characters (and one should be the main protagonist and the other should be the main supporting character)?

Now it’s tough to find any movies that pass this test. If you can find any movies, comment to me below.

Why does Cinema ignore the Female Lead?

I believe cinema is the major art that impacts society more than any other art including painting, literature, poetry, and drama.

Cinema has been the mirror to the societies and thoughts of the artist. But it is limited due to the following reasons.

• Less number of female directors.
• Big pictures not interested in female-led movies.
• The audience does not support women in films as much as men.

Art is limitless and beyond infinite so never approach it only with the mind of entertainment and commercial.

The action, drama, romance, fantasy, are not only limited to male characters, but it also belongs to the women in films.

I would love to see characters like Fa Mulan and Beatrix in Kill Bill fighting everyone and franchises like The Hunger Games with the female lead. The innocence of the girls in Mr. Miyazaki’s animations also impressed me.

I hope someday I’ll watch a female James Bond in action too.

The world cannot make progress if you couldn’t see the perspective of female characters.

Give space to women in films as much as men and support the strong female characters. It makes a huge impact on women’s empowerment and helps the cinema to develop as an art.

I’m seeing a wave of more female leads in Hollywood in recent years. I want this wave to continue and spread across the world.

The Uncoiled writes articles to celebrate the limitlessness, and we had a particular series “Art Uncovered” dedicated to uncovering the art and the artist, if you are interested, then check it out.

Feel free to discuss in the comment section.

“I didn’t have time to be anyone’s muse… I was too busy rebelling against my family and learning to be an artist.”

Leonora Carrington.

I didn’t have time to be anyone’s muse… I was too busy rebelling against my family and learning to be an artist.” – Leonora . C

born 6th of April 1917 in Clayton Green / England

died 25th of May 2011 in Mexico City

Leonora studied briefly at Mrs. Penrose’s Academy of Art in Florence before she, after a few detours, started studying at the Ozenfant Academy of Fine Arts in London. Through a book (‘Surrealism’ by Herbert Read) gifted to her by her mother, she became familiar with Surrealism.

Although her parents made it possible for her to, in one way or another, to study art, they were not supportive of her pursuing a career in art. Her father even later decided that he never wanted

to see her again after she decided to move to Paris with Max Ernst and pursue her career as an artist. Max, she got to know in first through his paintings exhibited at the ‘International Surrealist Exhibition’ in London 1936, which she felt drawn to and then in person 1937, at a party. They soon fell in love with each other and decided to move to Paris. In Paris, Leonora was introduced into the circle of Surrealists and got an insight into how her life could look like now as an artist. After a year of staying in Paris, they decided to move to the South of France (Saint Martin d’Ardèche) away from the turmoil of the city and to fully dedicate themselves to their art creating.

In these years Leonora created some key paintings which formed her vision of how she wants to be as an artist, a woman, a person, and what impact she wants her artwork to have. When World War II started Max was arrested first by French authorities and then again by the Gestapo because his art was considered ‘degenerate’ by the Nazis. Max’s arrest was very hard for Leonora and since she had nothing left to stay for she agreed to go to Spain with a friend. Her anxiety and delusions came to a peak there which ended in a psychotic break and getting admitted into an asylum. There she was given Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT / formerly known as electroshock therapy), Cardiazol  (an anxiety-reducing drug) as well as Luminal ( a drug acting as a central nervous system depressant). After being released she was informed that her parents decided to send her to a sanatorium in South Africa. On the way there ( she was released into the care of a keeper) she was able to escape to Portugal. There she met Renato Leduc, a poet, and Mexican ambassador, who she agreed to marry to be accorded the immunity of a diplomat’s wife. After a year they decided to move to Mexico, with which Leonora instantly fell in love, and continued to live on and off for the rest of her life. From now on she fully worked as an artist and lives committed to her work. A lot of her written works and books also emerged in that time. In 1943 she and Renato divorced. Later she married again, Emerico Weisz, a photographer, with who she had two sons (Gabriel and Pablo).

Leonora died on the 25th of May 2011 in Mexico City, at the age of 94 years.

Leonora Carrington – Artwork

I first got in touch with her work through a documentary I watched on women artists in the surrealist movement and was completely mesmerized by it. Her paintings hold a lot of power which is just contagious. In her artwork, she uses a lot of symbolism, mysticism, and figures from fairytales (as seen in her painting The Giantess), a lot of them from Irish tales her nanny and her mother told her. Her works compare to the style of surrealism although she never said of herself to be a surrealist.

A focus in her work was to present female sexuality as she was experiencing it instead of just presenting the theory and characterization of female sexuality (what a lot of male surrealists did). A good example of that interest is her painting Self Portrait  (Inn of the Dawn Horse). I would describe this painting by her as one of her key works since it set free a lot inside her what inspired her for a lot of her future work. The hyena in Self Portrait for example is used a lot in her later works (for example in her short story La Debutante) and is a symbol for both male and female joining into a whole and used metaphorically for the night and dream worlds. This is interesting since Leonora often felt like she lived partly in a dream world and is then making it visible through her work (especially her paintings).

Her written works are also very interesting to read. Since she worked a lot of symbolism it’s almost like

you’re solving little riddles or mysteries hidden in the text which makes you think deeper about topics and how we view life. What also impressed me about her is writing down her experiences in the asylum and expressing them through paintings (for example in Portrait of Dr. Morales and Map of Down Below) in a time where mental illnesses and mental health had an even worse status than they do today, with even worse stereotypes and cliches surrounding it and with mentally ill people treated very badly in the existing asylums. She explained everything that was done to her, including sexual assault, ruthless therapies, being given hallucinatory drugs, and living in unsanitary conditions.

This woman and artist fascinate me so much because no matter what came into her way she believed in her dream and how she wanted to live her life and followed that relentlessly. She stood up for what she believed in and made that seen in her artwork. She also holds a lot of power and energy in everything she did. She reminds me of the power I have within myself (we all have), to live my life the way I want to, and to follow my dreams.

“There is nobody that can make you happy, you must take care of that matter yourself.”

Leonora Carrington.

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