Lena Viddo, Beyond Bondage
The first time, I met Lena Viddo, she walked across the room with with a man’s hat on and tight leather pants. She is, no doubt, charismatic and passionate. I mean really passionate: while talking with her husband, she suddenly gave him a kiss as if she was gasping for some air. And he was more than happy to respond.
We met a few weeks later at her studio and shared a tea talking for 2 straight hours about life, love and bondage. Here it goes:
Grace and power are the two first words that came to mind when you meet Lena Viddo.
She is an artist on a quest determined to explore the strengths and frailties through the intimate feminine representation and she does this with a scientific and referential approach. She works on a particular subject for years and when the answers appear, they also reveal the deeper questions. And then, naturally, her work morphs into it’s next phase.
Lena does fit any label and if you think you’ve figured her out, she will make sure to throw in an element that will make you think again.
Extremely disciplined and fierce about her creative time, she is specific about the people she chooses to see and the things she does. At the same time, she is instinctive like an animal on a prowl and her work transpires that sense of urgency.
Her Super Girl Psychedelic series is a tribute the warrior superhero female while her Internal Unfolding series shows her exposed as a mother sharing the space with her young child.
“I am convinced that endurance and fortitude are the strengths of every women. We can’t compete with men, nor should we. But we still have to fight to be heard” she says with a knowing smile.
In Ties that bind, her models reveal the nature of bondage in relationships with enough space for each viewer to choose to see either the physical, sexual or spiritual aspect in them. But she wants everyone to find their own responses to the questions she suggests.
She states: “There is no worse bondage than the addiction to perfection. Futile and in vain, it is the raping of the soul to even attempt such an impossibility”.
In her more recent work, Earthly Delights, she is learning a new way of painting in which each detail takes its source from myths, biblical stories and fairy tales. But we might have to wait the last painting of this serie for the questions to emerge and their attempted answers.
Perhaps because she is so strong, she is able to expose so much of herself through her controversial art. Or is it the other way around: because she knows the meaning of being vulnerable, she explores freely the ties of power?
