Lea Culetto:  My Life is a HairyTale, Take Two

Exhibition

Monday, 3 March 2025 at 7 p.m.

Alkatraz Gallery,

ACC Metelkova mesto,

1000 Ljubljana

Opening hours of the Gallery: Monday – Friday: noon – 6 p.m.

Lea Culetto:  My Life is a HairyTale, Take Two

In her artistic practice, Lea Culetto explores the influence of social norms on the perception of the female body, focusing on the beauty ideal as a mechanism of control. The project My Life is a Hairytale (2023) plays with the meaning of body hair and its social (in)acceptability. By shaping hair into hairstyles embedded in plush objects, it raises the question of whether the stylisation of hair would affect its perception. Through humour and aestheticization of bodily features, she offers a critique of patriarchal standards of appearance.

The artist is interested in what role female characters play and how the female body appears in fairy tales as a symbol of beauty and submission. The motif of the glass shoe through which blue blisters seep in the work entitled My Life is a Hairytale (2023) alludes to the hidden implications of these stories, ‘made meaningful’ in the saying ‘One must suffer to be beautiful’. At the same time, the artist explores also the symbolism of hair, which carries meanings in different contexts – from magical properties in folk tales to associations with power and ferocity in ancient myths. Her work titled 1,99 Grams Too Much (2017), which has already been exhibited in the Alkatraz Gallery, returns this time with the same message in a butter dish, with the hair that grew on the author’s body over the period of six months found its home.

Some of the exhibited works invite interaction, where visitors explore their relationship to the body and its social markers by touching sensors in e-textiles. The project thus opens up a space for reflection on internalised norms and their deconstruction through artistic expression.

Lea Culetto explores issues of bodily representation in popular culture in a broader context and critically addresses the influence of social expectations on the perception of the female body and its roles. Her work is often rooted in personal experiences, through which she reveals the mechanisms of the internalisation of norms and the feelings of inadequacy that follow. She creates artistic objects, clothing and accessories that thematise bodily processes, often marginalised by the fashion industry and society in general.

In addition to the polycystic ovarian syndrome in the work PCOS (2023), which consists of transfer-printed fertility symbols from different cultures, the artist is also interested in the misrepresentation of menstrual blood, which has until recently been portrayed in advertisements as blue liquid – a symbol of purity and sterility, whilst, simultaneously – in reference to fairy tales – alluding to the idea of the ‘blue blood’ of nobility and the privilege that derives from it. Wrapped and embroidered in soft furry fabric, the interactive works Ouch!, Blue Blood and Happily Ever After, as well as the transfer-printed works I Could Eat You Up…, …/… (2023) offer a brilliantly clear critique of capitalism, which results in painfully unequal distribution of resources and power among the people. With the help of legends (the prince turned into a frog, the queen as a snake, etc.) and the employment of a barbed wire heart made of plush, which is also a female body, uncannily similar to the Venus of Willendorf, Lea Culetto’s works reveal the suffering caused by the disciplining of minds and bodies of all genders in the service of the capitalist ‘nobility’.

The artworks in question were presented at the Likovni Salon Gallery last year. The Alkatraz Gallery features them for the audience of the Red Dawns festival, thus protesting against the unrealistic and exploitative demands of consumer society to devour ever new productions, and emphasising through the exhibition that important content is worth revisiting again and again.

Lea Culetto opens up a space for reflection on the freedom to decide on one’s own self-image and offers an alternative view of the aesthetics of the body. Her work is not merely critical, but also offers an incarnation of the otherness – using kitsch not only as an artistic expression, but rather as a means of creating a softer, kinder and playful world in which aesthetics embraces and incorporates non-normative forms of beauty and individual expressions.

Lucija Zajc, Ana Grobler, Veronika Rakovec

The exhibition will be open until 28 March 2025

Lea Culetto (1995, Trbovlje) obtained her MA in painting from the Academy of Fine Arts and Design, University of Ljubljana, in 2019. Since then, she has been self-employed in culture. She works in the field of visual arts, with a focus on feminism. Culetto uses textiles and mixed media to create objects and installations through which she interrogates ideals, taboos and ideas about the female body. Most often, her work stems from personal experience. She has held solo exhibitions at The Mikl House Gallery (Ribnica), Aksioma – Institute for Contemporary Art (Ljubljana), Ravnikar Gallery Space (Ljubljana), Božidar Jakac Gallery (Kostanjevica na Krki), Kresija Gallery (Ljubljana), Celje Fine Arts Salon (Centre of Contemporary Arts, Celje), and at the Swiss House Cultural Centre, MGLC – International Centre of Graphic Arts, Ljubljana, where she was artist in residence (2021-2023). She has participated in numerous group exhibitions, including Returning the Gaze (Cukrarna Gallery, 2022), Body and Territory (Kunsthaus Graz, 2023) and Always Available (Modern Gallery, 2023). She has collaborated and exhibited with various international festivals, such as the City of Women, Red Dawns, Lesbian Quarter and Duck Festival. In addition to exhibitions at festivals, she also runs various workshops. She has participated as a mentor in the Beavers Festival (Ljubljana, 2021) and the Old Continent project at the Swiss House Cultural Centre (Ljubljana, 2022). At the invitation of Varja Hrvatin, she participated as a costume designer in the performances Shame on You (Ljubljana Puppet Theatre, 2022), Ikigai (Celje Slovene People’s Theatre, 2023) and SUKEBAN (Cankar Hall, City of Women, Ljubljana, 2024). As a visual artist, she has been selected to participate in the SAiR project (Sustainability is in the Air, 2023-2025), led by the International Graphic Art Centre Ljubljana.

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Info

Organization: 26th International Feminist and Queer Festival Red Dawns (KUD Mreža)

Coproductin/ coorganization: Alcatraz Gallery (KUD Mreža)

Curatorial team: Lucija Zajc, Veronika Rakovec, Ana Grobler

Proof-reading: Sonja Benčina

Translation (to English): Ana Makuc

Graphic image design: Lenča Malec

Contacts for the media: Saša Nemec, rdece.zore@gmail.com

Financial support: Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia, City Council Ljubljana 

Donations