Marisa Portolese

by Manon Blanchette

Mystery pervades Marisa Portolese’s photographs. They tap into the depths of our inner self. Childhood and its scars lay at the heart of these works. They resonate with us by giving voice to the unutterable. A prolific artist since the 1990s, Portolese focuses on the personal realm. With disturbing realism she portrays the vulnerability of her subjects who are often members of her family. For all intents and purposes, they symbolize that search for identity that defines a person. Indeed, these family members seem to be proxies for an artistic undertaking seeking to engage the full complexity of the individual and their emotional underpinnings.

In 2000 Portolese began to exhibit her photographic series. Each series follows a theme that invites viewers to meander through psychological interiors where skin, clothes, surroundings, and especially the face and gaze, betoken another place and time, whether past or future. The ambiguity of these images commands respect, every image raises questions about those represented.

To date, this artist’s body of work basically comprises eight major series. Some of the series remain  ongoing and regularly add new, enigmatic characters. Portolese seldom presents groups of people; rather, a single individual generally fills the space of her staged scenes. A graduate of Concordia University, and now a professor there, she comes well-versed in art history. Not surprisingly then, her photography references classic artworks and her models occasionally assume iconic poses. Takefor example Édouard Manet’s well-known cultural image, Olympia (1863). She returns in a 2002 photograph where Portolese’s model, Marie-Christine, mirrors Manet’s muse. This picture forms part of the “Belle de jour” series (2002) which breathes new life into Manet’s and Ingres’ Odalisques. They avowedly inform Portolese’s work.

 

The photographs of her 2003 collection, “Un chevreuil à la fenêtre de ma chambre,” strike us because they capture intimate moments. In fact, one questions the purpose of these sensuous cameos. Like peeping Toms, we stare at them yet keep our distance because of the realism that permeates every image.

“The Dandy Collection” began in 2003 and continues still to this day. It inventories tropes of masculinity, a myriad range, from infants to older men, in various locales and vulnerabilities. (One example, a nude, whose prominent penis dangles defiantly, is exposed quiteliterally in a natural setting). By situating each individual in a pastoral locale, the artist adroitly highlights their similarities and differences so that as our eyes glide from one image to another, we perceive the dandy’s many facets.

The following year, Portolese initiated “The Recognitions” (2004-2005) series, which maintains that inscrutable aura that distinguishes her photography. More to the point, this series casts its characters into emotionally dramatic situations where time seemingly stands still. Little wonder then that her subjects adopt surrealistic poses which suggest an event outside the frame. This device creates an equivocacy that engenders multiple meanings, as exemplified by the 2005 photograph, Hush. Whether it alludes to a personal crisis, or harks back to Magritte, this series offers a rich array of possible readings, not least because Portolese couches her pictures in mystery. Further, by juxtaposing opposites, she infuses psychological tension into each character. Some appear to have isolated themselves and remain motionless amidst beautiful, even sublime, landscapes. These images convey such a tangible solitude that it constitutes their subject. Portolese thereby demonstrates mastery of the visual language she herself developed over the course of these aforementioned groups of work.

Both vulnerability and strength mark her collection, “Breathless” (2007). These portraits virtually encapsulate all the fragility that each subject expresses, so that Portolese’s works go beyond mere representation and seem to photograph emotions, if not psychological states.

The artist opened up new interpretative vistas with her highly aesthetic series, “Imagined Paradise” (2010). By interfacing representation,indeed the decorative with the psychological, these photographs endeavour to establish a lyrical dialogue. The key to its interpretation rests exclusively with the imagination.

Portolese has since crafted other series that articulate an unspoken desire for reconciliation. Pietà (2010) epitomizes this as it poetically reflects on moments of almost excruciating tenderness. In a few brief words, mother and daughter at last forgive one another. Their reconciliation involves that of two generations because Portolese experienced first-hand the cruel aftershocks of her mother’s  abandonment; that is to say, Portolese’s maternal grandmother abandoned her own daughter whose aunt consequently had charge of her. Despite the trauma caused by this unnatural absence of a mother from the lives of her children, art seems to have broken the cycle of suffering these women inherited.

“Antonia’s Garden” (2007-2011) amounts to a family album that subtly betrays their secrets and crises. Solitude once again looms large, all the more so because in this series, death appears for the first time. Its imminent presence serves as a reminder that everything has an end.

Far from just processing her feelings toward her family, Portolese here transforms family wounds into testaments of reconciliation. By virtue of her artistic practice, the suffering caused by the physical or psychological loss of a loved one morphs into a public healing ritual.

In other words, “Antonia’s Garden” affords yet one more opportunity to explore a spectrum of complex emotions that arise from a muted visual space. It, in effect, creates an opening which enables the viewer to momentarily play the protagonist’s role, and thus come to terms vicariously with their own woundedness.

Translated by Professor Norman Cornett.

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An art historian and arts administrator, Manon Blanchette began her career at the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal in 1976. Until 2007, she held various positions there, including Chief Curator and Communications and Marketing Director. A specialist in video art, she is also the author of several books and articles on contemporary art, communications and museum management. She holds a D.E.A. (Paris, 1984) and a PhD in arts studies and practices (UQAM, 2003).

This article was originally featured in BlackFlash Issue 31.3.