Artwork of the month August

Diamond Stingily, dead Daughter, 2021

Diamond Stingily

1990 in Chicago, IL, USA


dead Daughter, 2021


Carpet, 5 vases with bouquets of artificial flowers, 5 painted plinths, 16 bronze casts, 8 wax casts
Carpet: 550 × 550 cm
Dimensions variable
Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein, Vaduz

 

Diamond Stingily's oeuvre closely weaves together personal memory and social memory. In her works the artist conjures up a wealth of powerful emotions, including dedication, desire, suffering, fear, and anger, by taking the private sphere also to refer to the external conditions that influence it. The installations, sculptures and videos usually consist of everyday objects and found material that is, however, more akin to a collection of relics than a readymade. Hair, chains, doors and artificial flowers are the props in a tale or stage play that has taken place, or has yet to take place, and is thus emotionally and narratively charged. Transience and loss are recurrent themes in her work and central to her installation dead Daughter: pink plinths with richly coloured bunches of artificial flowers stand on a pink carpet, with bronze and wax casts of the artist's hands and feet lying on the carpet. Is this a funeral or a rebirth? The work is based on Stingily's deeply moving encounter with Colette Thomas's novel Le Testament de la fille morte, that was published under the pseudonym René in 1954. In the Italian translation of the book, Giorgio Agamben points out that René has to do with rebirth¹. The book is a diary and an anthology of poems, a book about the cruelty of love in which past and future are entwined, a novel of death and resurrection. It is the testament of Colette Thomas, one of those "jeunes filles à naître" ("unborn young women [daughters?]") and it has found an elective affinity in the artistic trail set out by Diamond Stingily.

Letizia Ragaglia

 

¹ The French word renaître means to be reborn, and the participle rené is identical to the author's pseudonym.

 

"My work is about me and my experience and how to get that across to other people."

Diamond Stingily

<b>Diamond Stingily, dead Daughter, 2021</b>
Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein highlights a work from the permanent collection each month throughout the year. Works from the collection of the Hilti Art Foundation are also included in this series on a regular basis.