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curated by
Paola Verde
 
Pride, Sloth, Lust, Anger, Gluttony, Envy, Greed. Officially they were listed by Thomas Aquinas in the thirteenth century, classified as deadly sins, that is morally illicit acts, in contrast to human conscience and moral standards dictated by the Church, then recounted in Dante's Purgatory, represented in the visual arts in all their imaginative power , from Bosch to Durer, printing in the minds of Christians the horror of hell tortures destined to sinners after death. Throughout the Middle Ages, Western Christianity is reflected and recognized into the metaphor of human soul seen as a battlefield, in which virtues are facing with the seven powers of the devil (vices) in search of salvation.Following the protestant criticism of Luther against Church and its inventions, developed only to terrify the consciences of the faithfuls and regulate their behavior, the birth of modern science, the Enlightenment, the development of modern philosophy abandoned the word sin, because they no longer recognize anything holy to be dissacrated. Nietzsche's madman in his sentence "God is dead' condemns all gods and all truths of Western culture and its false values . To use Hegel's words, virtue seems to have been defeated by the course of the world. it is hard to be able to immunize ourselves entirely from the bonds of passion as the Stoic sage wished. Yet contemporary nihilism does not care about vices, because they do not even really believe into virtues. Degeneration or distortions can not be categorized into real human action, because it's hard to find any imperative ethical code to follow. Inside the vocabulary of conformity where "value" is what is appreciated as a conformity to a standard of beauty, intelligence, efficiency socially required, vices can be considered, at best, as defects: literally, a "lack" that does not meet the requirements, or feel adequate enough to be part of the world which we live in. In this new millennium obscure forest, there is no more hell or heaven, salvation or redemption: we are floating inside a murky maelstrom of feelings and desires, out of moral space, extricating ourselves from our weaknesses and recreating again changing our shape, taking strenght into these new values of modernity and giving birth to new forms of contemporary iconography. Greed, tree bearing the capitalist society, television, symbol of the contemporary age of apathy, then rampant consumerism, the new vices, addictions, the cult of the vacuum, they all are seen almost as values of this modern age, disorders of a greedy desire stifled by the repressive power of a society expelling everything that is different, marginalizing it outside the limits of a pre-established ethical behaviour, still too tied to outdated precepts. Human gender has changed and his behavior too. Darkam sinks into this theme sectioning it like a scalpel, so direct and crude in her elegant and dark symbolism , perforating the surface as a piercing and giving birth to spiritual and bodily mutations: there is no more vice or virtue, sin or redemption, she talks directly about dysphuncions of desire, lusts of restless and never fulfilled souls, so deeply rooted in human being to become prosthesis, mutations, deformities or amputations. yet these creatures, dressed in the Evil's cloths, populate the sleep of reason in this atrocity exhibition that is called the existence of modern man, where anger, greed, lust are inherent characteristics of human being, like nettles grown in concrete making their way by sealing sutures of our soul. Darkam was born in 1985 in San Marino. As a cartoonist she works with independent publishers, she draws self-produced comics and books, and sketches the words of young noir writers. She also transforms the noise that is in her head into distorted sounds during industrial live sets inside smoky and rusted factories. She uses her body as a total integration of her narration through performances and body rituals. Since 2010 she lives in Berlin, restless soul and fundamental member of XLAB Corrosive Art Farm, every day giving us her personal visions of a parallel universe populated by misterious and fashinating creatures of darkness. (Paola Verde) –