Gina Pane - autoagresja to wy!
Gina Pane. You Are Self-aggression

Summary/Abstract: The masochistic body art of the 1970’s was deeply set in a social and political context. The artists felt responsible for their performances which were often shocking and misunderstood. These were conducted against the war in Vietnam as well as gender and racial discrimination. It was in this decade that the painful poetics of Gina Pane’s works became most apparent. Paweł Leszkowicz attempts to reveal the layers of meaning in the artist’s works which have been covered by a tendency to make art universal. The series of photographs, Escalade non-anesthésiée (Climbing without Anaesthetics), 1971, in which the artist climbs barefoot on the sharp edges of a metal grating and the Azione Sentimentale (Sentimental Action), 1973, in which rose thorns are stuck into the artist’s forearm and a razorblade cuts her hand are usually perceived as a protest against society which is indifferent to the suffering of the individual. Paweł Leszkowicz, however, draws attention to a more intimate dimension, i.e. Gina Pane’s homosexuality. Through her suffering the artist “sacrificed herself on the altar of a homophobic civilisation” in order to find empathy in viewers who had so far been indifferent or even hostile. The clearly depicted wounds were a symbol of “external aggression” which the artist wanted to confront. The artistic masochism of Gina Pane “is full of religious references”. Similarly to Christ suffering on the cross for his faith the artist wounds her body for the sake of her own homosexual identity. It is not surprising that once she completed her bloody and difficult to endure performances she became interested in sculpture and photography based on the iconography of St. Francis, St. Laurence and St. Sebastian (Partitions). The message expressed by the cry of the female body became fuller set against the martyrdom of these saints.

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