BEATRICE MARCHI

WHO CRUSHED THE EVIL TURTLE?

June 8 - July 29, 2022

The story goes like this. Two portraits were commissioned:

a version that presented the person as good and another

that presented them as bad, and when they died, the living

decided which portrait to display. Which version befits the

life lived — good or bad?!?!

Beatrice’s diptych The Good/Bad Mafalda echoes this

story, compassionately depicting her family dog who died

in old age. Two colourful portraits of Mafalda with droopy

eyes, are flanked by panels of glass painted black that are

easily mistaken for tablet screens. These can be folded

over to show only one side of the painting, hiding the

other. Another animal protagonist in the show, takes the

form of a turtle. In one painting it appears to be clawing

at a crack in a glass ceiling. In the other painting the turtle

is itself breaking apart, held between two thumbs quite

like a phone, painted on a surface that is modular quite like a

turtleshell…. This character is the ,evil turtle’. And there is a

real story which inspired it. She was found crushed, twice:

once behind a door and once a dog broke her shell. She

survived b u t she became very aggressive.

Obliquely, I’m reminded of a Youtube video titled Envy from

Contra Points. The host of this channel, Natalie Wynn,

refers to Friedrich Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Morals and

the reversal of attributes once considered good and bad

((((Ancient athletic gods were worshiped as good while the

weak and sick equaled bad; until slaves revolted and

claimed that suffering equaled good and noble!)))).

Wynn applies Nietzsche’s Genealogy of morals to social

media and the court of public opinion, proposing that in

many instances where public figures are taken down in

the guise of social Good, it is rather envy sublimated to

contempt. I think Beatrice’s comically aggro turtle and the

colourful pooches are similarly fallible creatures.

The wallpaintings titled «La vendetta della vacca lussuriosa» ( Revenge of the Lustful Cow) are inspired by a

Giovanni Segantini landscape, especially by a story of how

he painted it (…and I don’t mean which brushes he used).

According to one account, he spent 6 months outdoors in

the mountains, setting up the scene with cows and farmers. To fix the cows in position, he poked or cut the cow

so that by licking the wound, the cow would hold the same

pose. “I don’t know if this is true” Beatrice remarks about

this story and that of the double portraits. But they’re wild

tales and possibly quite a bit more.

Julia Dubsky