CONSTRUCTIONS
"Newspapers are powerful metaphors. Just citing some names evokes poetry and metaphysics: Le Monde, The Courant, The Times, Corriere della Sera, Pravda. Nothing less than The world, Time Evening, Messengers, Truth, Details, and finally, Everything. First rolled up to dry on the overhead plumbing pipes in a basement studio in New York, the tube-shaped newspapers that are such central elements in Giordano's constructions evoke a history ranging from batons with written messages passed on by Greek runners to rolled-up newspapers thrown onto lawns and doorsteps, as well as all the form and content that unfold within. Giordano's beautifully crafted constructions are odes to a vanishing tradition." - Cynthia Nadelman
My current series of works Constructions focus on the interwoven relationships of global events.
Newspapers from around the world are entwined within the constructions heralding the myths and stories which differ significantly in every culture throughout the formation of history. Quickly stained with age, and as fragile as society itself, newspapers, are our present day carriers of messages. They are rolled and woven throughout my work and then preserved in wax.
Weaving has significance for me, in that it is an activity in which women engage to hold together, or try to hold together, those pieces of information and knowledge, marriage, & relationships that seem to slip from our grasp. As a group, then, these works concern the destruction of form followed by its reconstruction - valuable for its ability to begin a new process that is instrumental in healing our history, ourselves.
"History is a version of the past events that people have decided to agree upon" – Napoleon
© Joan Giordano 2021. All rights reserved.