Maja
Lena Johansson
Maja Lena Johansson is the
coordinator
of exhibitions at the Anna Nordlander Museum and
presented the art exhibition 'Monica Sjoo -
Blessed Be', in Stockholm from August 25 -
September 17, 2006. Details of this and another
exhibition held in conjunction with a seminar can be
seen in our Biography/On Going Events section.
In 1967 Monica Sjöö exhibited paintings of naked men.
She had decided to study men as an esthetic sexual
object. She painted with a raw strength that was not
received kindly by her Swedish contemporaries. It
seems it was taboo to show the nobler parts of a
man’s body in art. Women, on the other hand, could
be shown in any way one might choose.
In the years that followed, Monica Sjöö never ceased to fight for
women/feminism, although as time went by she shifted
the focus of her struggle totally towards the Goddess,
working from a deeper perspective than the currently
accepted approach towards sex and gender. The myth of
the Goddess became a never-ending source of
inspiration in her exploration of parallel realities.
Is it really so that the arrangements of megaliths
that the historians tell us represent ships are in
fact powerful symbols of the feminine? Our forebears
were great worshipers of nature, in which the female
plays a prominent role. Later patriarchal society has
repressed these myths and earlier truths into
forgetfulness. In her pictures Monica Sjöö sought to
decode this different experience of the truth. She
gives us no answers, posing questions instead. How is
it that modern architecture is composed of rigidly
formed high buildings while our forebears’ created
rounded forms when they built?Monica Sjöö saw the modern,
abstract tradition as a flight from nature and a
denial of the organic. She always fought for a living
earth and for the women of the world, a struggle that
placed her in direct opposition to the modernism of
patriarchal society. The dryness of the correct,
controlled and organised stands in stark contrast to
the damp, fluid and unformed that our contemporary
culture fights so hard to eradicate. To permit a body
to flow is to break the same rule that tells us that
painting should confine itself to modernistic ideals.
The visual language of Monica Sjöö breaks all the
rules; it is neither correct, restrictive, nor
controlled. Her pictures move us and etch themselves
on our memory. They are directed towards the
unrestrained figure of the Goddess. Monica Sjöö’s
work has been called ugly. That a word so simple as
“ugly” is used suggests that the self-censoring
mechanism, built into our culture by society, for one
short moment has collapsed. The Goddess has spoken
unformed and animal. Thank you Monica for allowing Her
spirit to remind us.
Maja
Lena Johansson
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Be