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«In many ways, Marti’s works expand the perceptions we have of Mediterranean art, incorporating passion, movement, dance, heated color and violent gestures.  She not only paints onto her photographs, but paints onto the backdrops and the models themselves, creating an unlikely mix of expressiveness and camoflauge…. Seen from above, the human figure slowly emerges from its cocoon. When disentangled from being constricted by the tight, white fabric, the body reacts with exaggerated liberty, full of energy, the man screams with relief. These videos are projected from above, inside open white boxes, in a white, all-white space. All the actions and emotions are thus contained and neatly packaged, literally boxed-in. The videos depict varying degrees of panic, aggression and frenzy, relaxation and fatigue, contortion and grace. It is about the ownership of a restricted territory.”
Jonathan Turner, curator and art critic, Rome/Sydney, 2009

I asked, why SCREAM?  Francesca replied “The scream of birth, the mother’s and child’s pain, the extreme liberation in our soul.”

«I replied, ah yes, the scream … empathy inspires and transmits primordial feeling, alerts attention, it’s an uninhibited necessity to release, to project energy, to exist.  A scream connects our internal silence and diminishes distance. It’s an eruption, bridging the intangible inner to the tangible outer self.  Marts scream is a disassembly of our imprisonment, an irrepressible outburst, a transmutation of aggression, a wailing soul trying to assert its unique identity and existence. It’s a scream of global rebirth, a climactic scream of the voiceless, muted, oppressed, exploited, abused Mother Earth and her children. The scream of all species, the scream of femininity, neglected and crying for respect. The scream for the rights of she who nurtures.  The scream to awaken the inner savior, someone who can morph from the insatiable hunger and consumption of a Caterpillar with its ecological devastation into the light flight of the Butterfly, the next paradigm in a new world of nonviolent economics.  This project suggests the hopeful creation of sustainable world peace, emerging from the chrysalis of the current crises of economy, energy and climate.»  Daniel Alzamora Dickin, Neuroacoustic Composer and Conceptual Consultant for SCREAM, 2015

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«One day Zuang-zu dreamed that he was a Butterfly. And he flapped around in the sunlight – so easily and free. Then he awoke and had to recognize very physically, that he was simply Zu. But how could he be sure, if he was Zuang-zu who had have a dream about being a butterfly – or if he was a butterfly, just dreaming that he was Zu? But there must be a difference between Zu and the butterfly. That’s what is called the transformation of things.»  Zhuangzi

  

«A group of friends sitting in the garden. Expressing sounds with their movements and words. Exchanging  nothing but the same ideas. Imitating one another unconsciously. Influencing each other into a white space.

Something draws my attention. Something followed another rhythm. The free movement of butterfly wings attracted me. The rhythm and sensitivity. Having the curiosity to go from flower to flower, in a controlled way. The elegancy of the movement. Leaving footprints of colours in the air.  For a moment I wanted to feel like a butterfly myself.  A butterfly in my thoughts.  Thoughts that come and go, invading my mind and flooding my soul. In the essence of my feeling, the butterfly enters and leaves the White Space. A space where nothing happens. Space that comes from the past and goes towards the future. Space with tears and enlightenment, but also emptiness.  Space where everything finishes and something begins.

Each work of art needs a white space, between the strokes of the brush.  And thus we are developing, growing towards the end of our lives,  to the point where everything fuses, from the moment of conception, the love, the life and death.»

Francesca Marti, 2007

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As her starting point, the artist takes her observation of the birth of an insect from a chrysalis and its efforts to abandon its  protective shell. The subject echoes the nervous movement of the insect in The fly, although on this occasion it is a butterfly, still wrapped in the «veils» of this chrysalis, which offers us a dance/fight of energetic moves. While still enclosed in its cocoon, we feel distanced from this hard-to-distinguish figure. As a life as yet unformed, it poses many questions. This piece stems from performance and through music, evolves into dance. What nature reveals as a cocoon can here adopt the form of a box from which the butterfly/dancer emerges with this liberating dance. This approach is similar to the mystery which Nature shows us in the genesis of life.

The “Scream Project“, which she has worked on intensively since several years, consists of the video installation “Cocoon – Into the Box“, a series of sculptural works that has emerged out of this, as well as various photographs and video projections on painted canvas from the “Scream Crystal“ series.

In her video installations, Martí combines various forms of expression and media – ranging from painting and photography to dance, performance and music – to create intensely associative realms of experience. In her multi-part video installation “Cocoon – Into the Box“, the viewer looks down at black and white video projections in small wooden boxes dispersed across the floor of the gallery. Inside, we find a human figure seemingly in the process of freeing himself from a cocoon. Emerging from his cocoon, the figure stretches and attempts to stand on his own two feet, like a newborn animal or a butterfly immediately after its metamorphosis – full of energy and innocent curiosity for the strange, new world into which it was born. After a while, the figure begins to scream with all its might – both out of joy for being liberated as well as out of fear of the unknown. Yet through the limitations of the boxes (each only 100 x 100 cm), all of his movements and emotions are strictly restricted; his territory is limited. Despite all the passion, a certain order takes control here. The videos depict various intensities of panic, aggression and ecstasy, as well as relaxation and exhaustion, dislocation and grace. (Jonathan Turner)

Francesca Martí’s art is never static – she continues to grow and develop, so that each new work or series of works can be seen as a “work in progress“. Everything flows. With the “Scream Crystal“ series, she combines video, performance, music and painting to create laconic scenes of emotional, spiritual and artistic liberation. A figure is projected onto colorfully painted canvases, painted with great expressive gestures. The figure seems to be trying to break through a tear in the canvas, to free itself and enter the gallery space. The tear in the canvas is reminiscent of a wound. Behind the canvas is an unknown space yet to be discovered; the painted surface of the canvas, on the other hand, serves as a surface for the visible, the concrete, the known. “Scream Crystal“ addresses age-old human themes of life and death. We are dealing here with an artistic attempt to reunite contradictions of all kinds.                                                                                 Jonathan Turner, Rome: art curator/critic.

Press coverage of the previous SCREAM project: