LUCERNE.- “I could be a poet. I’ve never seen myself at university”, Mariposa thinks. She has just discovered her creativity and wonders what might be inside a poet’s head and body. Mariposa, the butterfly, searches through the long grass for the path to university, although the signposts are confusing and the other figures in the meadow don’t know the way either.

The Argentine artist Constanza Giuliani (*1984) created the figure of Mariposa in 2018 against the backdrop of the protests about violence towards women. The artist uses the figure so as to investigate fundamental issues to do with life and personal development: What is creativity? Inspiration? Education? Who has access to these? What is inside our heads? And ultimately, who am I? Mariposa matures between astonishment and ambition, insecurity and self-awareness. Her conclusion is: I want to be a butterfly personality – a “Maripersonalidad”. Like in fairy tales and myths, the story, loosely narrated in individual images, addresses themes such as identity, the meaning of life and the experience of the world.

Giuliani’s pictorial idiom has been inspired by pop culture and comics: the line is to the fore, the figures simplified, and the colours clear and bright. Often texts describe the figures’ thoughts and questions, several scenes in an image form a narrative. Giuliani’s figures operate in the world of young people today. They use mobile phones, search for their identity and are plagued by self-doubt. At first glance, Giuliani’s pictorial world, with its butterflies, mice and other animals, seems seductive and charming. At second glance however, breaches emerge in which the less pretty, but all the more commonplace sides of life become apparent.

Constanza Giuliani transforms the exhibition space into a landscape in which the various elements – stones, plants, but also a foot – merge fluidly. In Mariposa’s world everything is equally animated. In one corner a hill rises up gently and invites viewers to sit on soft mats and let their thoughts wander, together with Mariposa. A swarm of butterflies lands on a wall, their wings show short comics that tell of self-empowerment and daring to do something, of love for a teacher, of sexual desire, of mobile phone photo-culture and of the friendships anxieties and animosities that characterise life. The butterflies within reach may be taken home!

Kunstmuseum Luzern in cooperation with Fumetto Comic Festival Luzern
Constanza Giuliani: Was steckt im Körper der Poetin?
March 9th - May 26th, 2024
Curated by Eveline Suter
All events take place in German.