Work: Dynamic Tension

Description

“There are in her sculptures the memory of and a longing for classicism, thus their simple primordial beauty is an emblem of vitality and purity, although it is undermined by the threat of sorrow.” – La Fondazione Ignazio Silone writing of Tiziana Felicioni.

“Tensione dinamica” is a small bronze and wood artwork (45cm tall), created by Tiziana Felicioni in 1997.

The sculpture is of a filiform bronze woman, wearing only a close-fitting bodysuit, who is seated on a wooden base. She is in the act of stretching forward perhaps to stand up or to be present in a more emphatic way. Her arms and legs are extremely long and thin, deliberately disproportionate. Her arms are bent at the elbows and her hands are resting on the support. Her right leg is bent at the knee and the sole of her foot is held against the support while her left foot is on the base. She is leaning forward and the curve of her upper body carries on into her long neck where the curve becomes unnatural.

Her head is tilted slightly upwards and her face expresses all her accumulated tension, chin thrust forward, thin pointed face with delicate features and a tight mouth. The title that Tiziana Felicioni chose for the artwork is eloquent: the body of this sinuous female figure generates a dynamic tension. The point where all the forces generated come together is her hairstyle: her hair is gathered into a helix-shaped ponytail that seems to accumulate all the energy created by the continual thrusts generated by her body, annulling them and allowing them to dissipate into the surrounding space.