Texts
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​Resilient Transitions
May 2026
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Resilient Transitions unfolds as a site-specific environment conceived to be inhabited, where nature is understood as a unified living field in which matter, body, and thought are inseparable. Within this perspective, transformation is not the exception, but the fundamental condition of existence: everything persists, adapts, and evolves through unceasing change.
In a world marked by acceleration, fragmentation, and widespread ecological precarity, the exhibition opens a space for profound reflection. Rather than offering certain answers, it poses a vital question: how can we evolve meaningfully within systems that we cannot fully control? What drives us to persevere, to activate our latent capacities, and to continue growing even under conditions of uncertainty? In this place, works are not presented as discrete or finished objects, but as encounters. Natural, temporal, and
corporeal forces slide into one another, dissolving and reappearing in a narrative that accepts no final state, rendering the viewer not an external observer, but an element immersed in the flow.
Franka’s paintings, created with mineral pigments and pulverized granite, do not describe images but evoke a sedimented memory. Her tactile surfaces, inspired by the geological force of coastal cliffs, capture time as an open trace; every gesture remains suspended between conscious control and surrender to the material, reflecting the tireless force of a nature that models itself in continuous becoming.
In parallel, Vania’s sculptures move with a density charged with tension: built through cycles of manual modeling and repeated firings, they embody the fragility of weight and the instability of form. Their surfaces accumulate like layers of skin or eroded terrain, marked by fractures and deposits that emerge from the interaction between matter and heat; here, resilience appears not as rigid resistance, but as the profound capacity to absorb change, reorganize, and persist through metamorphosis.
Between the two-dimensionality of painting and the physicality of sculpture, an interstitial field takes shape where the works do not stand in isolation, but call to, extend toward, and lean upon one another, generating a shared spatial condition. Within the triangular architecture of the gallery, a subtle path emerges - not imposed, but discovered through movement - making the space itself an integral part of the work: a constructed environment that breathes and invites cohabitation. Both artists resist the closure of fixed meanings, remaining focused on the process and on that which is still in the making; in this openness, vulnerability becomes a method of inquiry and matter is left free to negotiate with itself.
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Connection thus emerges as a vital response to uncertainty, transforming the act of coming together - through artistic practice and collaboration - into a way of navigating the precarity of the present.
The body, extended into surface, trace, and presence, appears as both a poetic and political act: not as spectacle, but as a form of sustained attention and inner transformation. Beauty, in this context, does not assert itself; it emerges discreetly where pigment gathers or dissolves, where form yields to what it cannot entirely contain.
At its core, Resilient Transitions is an invitation to the courage of allowing oneself to be transformed, reminding us that adaptation does not begin with control, but with the willingness to reimagine the systems we inhabit. This exhibition resists definitive resolution,
revealing itself as a living system of relations and slow transformations that invites us to consider ourselves not as fixed identities, but as potentialities that persist within change. In this space, time does not erode: it deeply inscribes. And the works continue, quietly and insistently, to become.
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Federica Elena, Independent Curator​
MOTHER EARTH
November 2024
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This Earth. Terra Firma - rooted in the physical world, grounded, stable, strong.
Dutch artist Franka Struys excavates meaning from the earth, seeking through the materiality of earth an allegory beyond physical existence. She digs deep. Literally extracting minerals, she grinds rock into powder; pure mineral pigments used to stain raw canvas. The Struys process mimics the earth itself. 'Leveling with the earth', canvases are laid on the artist’s studio floor. With brushes and rags she floods surfaces with vibrant warm yellows, burnt reds, browns, earth greens, blue.
Symbols emerge. In Struys’ hands minerals metaphorically transform to reveal a complex web of paradoxical meanings - the fragility of existence, climate transition, sexuality, vulnerability, renewal and regeneration.
Struys associates the earth with the feminine – a fertile, fecund cycle of nature, embodying abundance and growth. A Mother Earth of infinite creativity. In Maman, the large-scale canvas exposes fold on fold of flesh coloured labia-like forms; Struys acknowledges Louise Bourgeois’ archetypal ‘mother figure’ spider sculptures, scaled to simultaneously intimidate and protect beneath their monumental shelters. At the same time feminine and feminist, Maman pays homage to Georgia O’Keefe’s sensuously provocative abstract paintings that evoke female genitalia.
To Struys, Gaia, the Greek goddess of Earth, has particular significance. British writer James Lovelock’s seminal book, Gaia, published 40 years ago, helped shift popular perceptions about the Earth, proposing that life on Earth self-regulates its environment to create optimum conditions for advancement of life. This century has struggled to affirm the likelihood of Earth’s continuing productive trajectory. In Gaia, another scaled-up painting, Struys presents a ponderous, potentially menacing scenario. Large
pendulous female forms suspend in space, heavy, unanchored; the assumed security of Mother Earth askew, fraught.
Infinite and microscopic spatiality punctuate Struys’ oeuvre. Intimate paintings such as Earth 1 and Earth 2 capture eternal, elemental qualities of planet Earth, vast immensity in an image we can hold in our hand.
If we listen to Struys, our home is our anchor; the Earth our Mother. With the planet at tipping point, these immersive paintings are portents - compelling us to embrace and protect what we may take for granted.
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Jayne Dyer
2024
www.jaynedyer.com
Australian artist, arts writer, cultural producer.
Co-Artistic Director, Bienal Fotografia do Porto, Portugal, 2023 & 2025 editions bienal23.bienalfotografiaporto.pt
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