The Sisters is a series of photos taken by Patrizia Guerresi Maimouna between 2001 and 2004.

The artist shows her two daughters had by two husbands of different nationalities, cultures, and religions. The work is a metaphor of two worlds that are different but spiritually similar and that meet up and dialogue in a possible yet real family communion.

With a veil covering her head, AdjiŒs Afro-Islamic origins can be recognised. Marlene, light-skinned and Christian, even though veiled, has her head uncovered. The sisters are represented by the artist in a hieratic and mystic pose during one of their daily moments of intimacy. The gestures and looks remind us of the iconology of the Madonna in past art or, as in the photo Paesaggio, refer back to the Romantic symbols of Böcklin.

These two sisters of different race and religion meet in such ecstatic moments as when they open the fridge which radiates a mystic light or a chat over a cup of coffee. The artist captures moments from their daily life, juxtaposing static situations with movement such as choosing a dress, packing, meeting at the front door, or such as the photo of the sisters planning an imaginary home.


Paola Colombari, a gallery dealer in avant-garde design and contemporary art, has decided that, to inaugurate the first solo show in her gallery, she will be exhibiting work by Patrizia Guerresi who for some years she has been interested in and has promoted, both in Italy and abroad. Fascinated by the cultural syncretism of a language which has been developed through the interaction of the primordial roots of our human ancestry, Paola Colombari defines Guerresi as a medium-like searcher for energetic anthropocentrism. In fact she works on the cusp of different cultures which, in cabalistic and Sufi terms, dissolve together into a UNIVERSAL language.

On show will be some ten intense and profound works in an exhibition that should stimulate our deepest thoughts and feelings.

Biography
Patrizia Guerresi Maimouna is a sculptress, the creator of videos and installations, an artist of great authenticity and sensitivity who works referring to myths, the sacred sphere, and to the female condition all of which is seen as fragments and significant parts of the human body: a religious and mystic body. Whether using photographs, videos, or photographing silent veiled women austerely doing their domestic work or in individual poses, her works are both metaphors and provocations, delicate narratives and rational analyses: a woman dressed in white, wrapped in her chador and both immobile in her tradition and also isolated from it or, as in the piece Fathima, a woman with the body of Mother-Earth leads us back into the energetic cycle of Space-Universe-Infinity, the ³container² that is both within us and outside usŠ So Francesca Alfano Biglietti writes in the catalogue.

Since 1994 the themes of her work have been female spirituality, religious symbolism, and the veil. Her most important exhibitions, apart from her early showings in two Venice Biennales and in Kassel, were in the Giarina gallery, Verona, where she presented a series of sculptures in the form of nuts wit, on the inside, egg-shaped heads marked with various religious symbols, and the Eggmen, self-enclosed figures shown in the act of praying. The Lacrime di Allah, drops of white resin hanging from the ceiling, were seen in the Bianca Pilat gallery in 1996. In 1999 she had solo shows in the Rocca di Umbertine and in the Fondazione Mudima, Milan, where she exhibited her first circle of veiled women made from white resin and accompanied by a striking video The Virgin of the Rocks. This is a work of conspicuous relevance today (a woman who continues to remove her veil yet never managing to rid herself of it). Various shows on this theme followed such as that in the Valore gallery, Vicenza, the Varart gallery, Florence, and the Levy gallery in Madrid. In 2004 she presented the installation The Carpets, terracotta carpets seen in the Contemporary III museum in Atlanta. In 2006 in the Bel Art gallery, Milan, she exhibited a series of works on the theme of the Mystic African Woman. She was present with a large-scale sculpture, Light Signs, in a show held during the winter Olympics in Turin, 2006. This show was organised by the Studio Copernico and was introduced with an essay by Maurizio Calvesi. In the same year the Palazzo Forti museum of modern art in Verona bought her sculpture Kunta, she also presented the installation Walls in the new premises of the Spazio Teca gallery. She then had a solo show in the Klaus Gramse gallery and, at the same time, presented two videos in the Italian institute of culture, both venues in Cologne. She exhibited six large photographs in the photographic biennale organised by Ken Damy in Brescia.