Kanon - Hard And Fast Rules

“Kanon – Strict Rules” Vania Elettra Tam’s pictorial cycle started in spring 2015

What makes Vania Elettra Tam’s art recognizable is with no doubt the veiled-in-irony poetry with which she talks about feminine neuroses. Her social criticism is a personal point of view on a slice of contemporary everyday life.

Tam focuses her attention on anxiety caused by frustration, the same that generates new (and often unnecessary) needs and that pushes people to look for unimaginable solutions to solve non-influential problems.

“That’s why – says the artist - I thought to realize an art craft, in which the main character is sitting on a table focused on feeding his air need, of which he will be able to set temperature, smell, intensity, direction, quantity. As in all my artcrafts, also in this one the subject is a woman that I decided to name “Daria”, which derives by the Persian Dārayavahush, composed by the elements dâraya (to owe) and vahu (good). This choice enables me to create an Italian wordplay be entitling the art craft: Fame Daria (in Italian literally meaning Air Hunger), whose meaning includes both the entity and the will to solve the problem”. Fame Daria is the first painting of the pictorial cycle entitled “Kanon – Strict Rules”. It was painted in spring 2015, on the occasion of the art event “Cibi Condimentum Esse Famem”, realized by Frattura Scomposta magazine for EXPO 2015.

Further on Vania painted the artcraft “Ella Vìola”, title which has many meanings. Viola indeed is both a color name (violet), a flower one (symbolizing discretion) and a musical instrument (being part of the strings family). Furthermore, it is a feminine name, and a conjugation of the Italian verb “violare” (to violate): ella viola (she violates). Ella that means “she”, but that, in turn, can be a feminine name.
The painting represents a woman in a soundproofed room, focused on playing her tresses with a violin bow, strings of a dumb instrument, as it has no soundboard. An apparently useless act, that nonetheless seems to cause her a deep emotional involvement. She is probably playing her soul, she is the only one that can hear its music, no one other could violate that intimacy.

Until now the artist used self- portraits, as she often did in the past. The women of Fame Daria and of Ella Viola, indeed, look like Vania Elettra Tam. But in the following six paintings Old Masters were excellent inspirations. They look like noble women portrayed by Bronzino (Florentine Mannerism), a Venetian woman’s face painted by Albrecht Durer (German Renaissance) and a lady’s gentle face portrayed by Georges de La Tour (Baroque and Caravaggism). In painting a new version of those portraits Tam adds some grotesque contraptions. Torture masks (not too painful) that should model face features, punishment to which ladies inflict their selves in order to reach those standards of beauty that society imposes. That is why the cycle is entitled: “Kanon – strict rules” - “Kanon” (meaning standard, form the Greek kanon=rule) is the group of the strict rules aiming to get a perfect and well-proportioned balance. Achieving those standards means being a perfect model. - “Strict Rules (in Italian Regole Ferree, where Ferree means both Strict and of Iron/Steel)” underlines the importance of regulation but also refers to metal masks that portrayed women wear.
Each painting of the cycle “Kanon – Strict Rules” is paired with a drawing realized in sanguine on spolvero pad. One could wonder why nowadays, when everything is digitalized, Vania Elettra Tam felt the need to express herself by using such a classical language, that has a deep Renaissance taste. The answer is in the question itself: in an age in which people can easily lose touch with reality and when even friendship is virtual, Vania feels the need to take a step back and start again soiling her hands, by arising from Classical Culture, right how it happened to the artists of the second half of XIV century. This does not mean that Tam does not use technologies, as she uses them, for example, in the planning phase.

More info: vaniaelettratam.it