Protección Familiar (Family Protection)

DETALLES DEL PROYECTO

Protección Familiar (Family Protection) is a series of installations and photographs that seek to deconstruct the social institution of the family by exposing expectations and stereotypes.

These works present intervened objects that question the family unit and the feminine condition within it. For these installations, Tania Candiani uses objects embedded in the history of gender roles and domestic work.

The cultural subjectivity of Mexican social codes goes through ironic observations that extend beyond national identity and the family. Given the effectiveness of this unit in enforcing prescribed social roles, personal meaning arises from resistance and surrender to those roles.

Family Protection is a project that seeks to link with the community and seeks to fight with the perception and representation of modern life through the preeminence of narratives and the potential for experimentation with content.

Lanzadas

DETALLES DEL PROYECTO

Lanzadas, is part of a bigger series of works “Protección Familiar”, in which Candiani shows women who are taking up arms, using the only weapons they have available and turning the tools of domesticity into the tools of war.

In Lanzadas dozens of common brooms are suspended from the wall in a menacing, offensive posture. The tips of the brooms have been sharpened like spears and they are erect, hung at sharp right angles, menacing in their protrusion, with shadows that project onto the gallery wall. But in this piece the human form is absent, and despite their erect and ready posture, the brooms are still and unmoving, lingering in the air like a threat that is frozen in time. The domestic tools the artist has taken up in her call to arms walk a line between being plausible and threatening, and obsolete or even ridiculous. Are these traditional domestic tools the only protection that women have in a rapidly changing and increasingly violent environment?

In Lanzadas, Candiani engages directly with the violence around the women in ways that range from playful and tender to violent and aggressive. By exposing the fragility and vulnerability of the body, or engaging the body in attempts at defense and protection they address the physical and psychological conditions of living in a virtual battleground, calling to mind the fear, indifference and helplessness that is inherent in our collective responses to a violent reality.

Cascos Protectores

DETALLES DEL PROYECTO

Cascos Protectores, is part of a bigger series of works “Protección Familiar”, in which Candiani shows women who are taking up arms, using the only weapons they have available and turning the tools of domesticity into the tools of war. The helmets in Protección Familiar are made of common kitchen implements – colanders, pots and pans. They sit on the head of the wearer, providing protection while at the same time obscuring her view and creating a spectacle that is as humorous as is menacing. Candiani engages directly with the violence around the women in ways that range from playful and tender to violent and aggressive. By exposing the fragility and vulnerability of the body, or engaging the body in attempts at defense and protection they address the physical and psychological conditions of living in a virtual battleground, calling to mind the fear, indifference and helplessness that is inherent in our collective responses to a violent reality.

DETALLES DEL PROYECTO