Ordained Horny and Horned

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Comunicato stampa

Veda is pleased to present Ordained1, Horny2 and Horned3 , a show curated by Cedric Fauq with works by Juliette Ayrault, Azzeazy, Elsa Brès, Roy Köhnke, Tarek Lakhrissi, Sybil Montet and Floryan Varennes.

The exhibition will be on view from October 9 to November 6, 2021.
Join us for the opening on Friday, October 8, 2021, from 6 to 8 p.m.

***

“Just as the unicorn symbolically purifies the waters of the Earthly Paradise, or, in Lorenzo's poem, the waters of the Golden Age, so it stands in Castello at the source of the rivers that make Florence fertile. The "pure," "decontaminated" water streams through the lands of the Medici to the figure of Fiorenza, in the allegorical sense an allusion to the existence of the Florentines, now freed from all needs and barbarism, for whom the rule of the Medici has brought a new Golden Age.”

– Liliane Châtelet-Lange and Renate Franciscond, “The Grotto of the Unicorn and the Garden of the Villa di Castello” in The Art Bulletin, Vol. 50, No. 1 (Mar., 1968), pp. 51-58

“There is nothing in the nature of the yahmur which would oblige the artist to depict it with a single horn. The modern dictionaries designate it as a wild ass or onager, without an allusion to horn or horns.”

– Richard Ettinghausen, Studies in Muslim Iconography I. The Unicorn (Smithsonian Institution, Freer Gallery of Art Occasional Papers, vol. I, No. 3.), 1950

The black unicorn is greedy.
The black unicorn is impatient.
The black unicorn was mistaken
for a shadow
or symbol
and taken
through a cold country
where mist painted mockeries
of my fury.
It is not on her lap where the horn rests
but deep in her moonpit
growing.

The black unicorn is restless
the black unicorn is unrelenting
the black unicorn is not
free.

– Audre Lorde, “The Black Unicorn” in The Black Unicorn: Poems, 1978

*Illustration from Discours d'Ambroise Pare ... a scavoir, de la mumie, de la licorne, des venins, et de la peste, avec une table des plus notables matieres contenues esdit discours (chez Gabriel Buon, Paris, 1582.