Florence, Italy, photographer Julia Krahn on display at the Museo Novecento with the project ST. JAVELIN

On the occasion of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, November 25, 2022, the Museo Novecento launched the project ST. JAVELIN, the latest photo series by German photographer Julia Krahn (Jülich, 1978), in which the artist invites Ukrainian refugee women to tell their stories through images and interviews.

“When art becomes a spokesperson for important battles on the rights front, it succeeds in propagating universal messages and reaching people powerfully,” said Councillor for Culture Alessia Bettini and Councillor for Rights and Equal Opportunities Benedetta Albanese. “So does this work by Julia Krahn that combines the denunciation of all forms of violence and gender discrimination with the drama of the war in Ukraine. In the photographic narrative also a strong message of hope, through evocative and symbolic images. Inaugurating this exhibition on such a significant date is a way to give greater voice to the drama of violence and the need to counter it with all the means at our disposal starting with culture.”

“In the past years the Museo Novecento has started a path of artistic projects linked to the great symbolic days, such as the one for the elimination of violence against women or the Day of Remembrance, trying to reposition the role of artistic languages and reinvent the idea of public monument,” says Museo Novecento director Sergio Risaliti. “In this sense, it is as significant as ever to use the museum’s external loggia to occupy public space and come into direct contact with the square of Santa Maria Novella. The ten flags made by Julia Krahn and dedicated to the stories of as many Ukrainian refugee women thus enter into the heart of the dramatic events of our time, in which women are once again the victims of the inhuman barbarity of war. However, the women are also protagonists of stubborn resistance, committed to countering the violence perpetrated against their personal history, their home, their family world along with their bodies. Each of these women has something to tell, and Julia Krahn has managed to restore sacred meaning to a series of portraits of the present by resorting to the oldest of religious iconographies, the Madonna and Child, connoted today with other symbols and messages. The museum and art thus delve into the chronicle and seek to make us reflect ’before the pain of others,’ to quote a famous piece of writing by Susan Sontag devoted to our time and the relationship between pain, works of art and images of war. Julia Krahn does not offer us the most violent part of war, but turns these female figures into heroines and saints.”

The project is named after Saint Javelin, an image created and circulated during the war in Ukraine that depicts Our Lady holding an anti-tank missile, the javelin, a symbol of resistance. The new iconography of an armed mother reverses that of Mary holding her Son, calling to mind death and violence rather than life and love. Ten flags bearing portraits of Ukrainian refugee women will be installed in the outside loggia of the Museo Novecento, a kind of secular icons that impose themselves in space with all the strength and dignity of the message they carry, a message of resistance and peace. Within the photo series is also a self-portrait of the artist, immortalized holding her weapon, the camera, inviting the female refugees to do the same, describing their own weapons of daily resistance, made to build and never to destroy.

“I am not talking about the war, its impossible reasons for existing or those who are keeping it on, but about the people who suffer it. Indifferent to thought, position or status, they fled to save their children and left their husbands behind, Beyond the propaganda there are real people. Each with his or her own story. I welcome into the studio those who feel like sharing theirs,” declares Julia Krahn.

A second installation will take place in the inner loggia on the second floor of the museum, where the Die Taube series will be exhibited, featuring eight photographs printed on poster paper (affiches) and reproduced in large format.

In Die Taube, the artist returns to the sacred theme of theLast Supper, to which he has been dedicated since 2010, and through the metamorphosis of a pigeon into a white dove, then stained a deep red, traces the practice of ancient sacrifices. The images, thanks to an immediate spiritual appeal and Christian symbolism, establish a lively dialogue with the loggia, formerly dedicated to retreat and meditation, and at the same time invoke, like the Ukrainian women portrayed in the sails on the ground floor, a clear message of hope, transformation and passage to a new coexistence.

JULIA KRAHN is a German multidisciplinary artist. She was born in Jülich in 1978 and grew up in Aachen, Germany. In order to devote herself completely to art, she left her medical studies and moved to Milan where she lives and works. During the lockdown he opens his new studio in Santa Lucia, in the center of Sorrento. His research interrogates the permeability of the gaze between the identity of the artist and the viewer. She redefines everyday objects and symbols of the past with photographs that present an ambiguous fluidity: rather than telling the passage of time or constructing a story they crystallize, transform from a liquid to a solid state, fragments of a private and secret reality. His work reflects on the lost or unbalanced values of society, family and religion, even to the point of bringing the lens to images that lead back to Christian icons.

For all information, you can visit the official website of the Museo Novecento or click here.

Pictured: Julia Krahn, Marina, Motherhood, detail (2022)

Florence, Italy, photographer Julia Krahn on display at the Museo Novecento with the project ST. JAVELIN

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