Inspired by Vietnamese national epic Truyện Kiều - The Girl Kiều, artist Franca Bartholomäi created a wall installation of woodcuts and papercuts that offers a whole new view on the time-honored epic.
Exhibition is closed on
16, 17 and 19.10.2019 due to internal events and open again on
18, 20 and 25 – 27.10.2019
Kiều’s name is deliberately abbreviated in the exhibition title, A Girl Named K, since Franca Bartholomäi’s mission was not to create a faithful illustration of Nguyễn Du’s book Truyện Kiều – The Girl Kiều. Instead, she incorporated her own point of view. The woodcuts and papercuts are no renditions of Truyện Kiều, but rather bear Franca Bartholomäi’s own signature: Her metaphorically charged arrangements wed Nguyễn Du’s material and poetic imagery with Bartholomäi’s own associations and reflections on the subject.
In her cuts, Franca Bartholomäi works with her notion of Kiều as well as the overarching themes of the great lyrical epic, from shame, guilt, and humiliation to dignity and hope and a quest for warmth, security, and love.
Franca Bartholomäi’s black and white art exudes as sense of calm, a counterpole to the frantic pace of events in Truyện Kiều as well as to our own everyday lives. Her art invites us to ponder and muse, and perhaps discover a new aspect of Kiều’s story.
Franca Bartholomäi (* 1975)
has been working as a freelance artist since 2003. Her specialties include woodcuts, merging modern approaches with revered medieval craftsmanship. Having studied painting and graphic design at Burg Giebichenstein in Halle, she has been teaching graphic design since 2010. She won numerous scholarships and was awarded the Landeskunstpreis Sachsen-Anhalt in 2013. Bartholomäi’s patrons include the art collection at the German Bundestag, the State of Saxony-Anhalt, and the Public Library New York.
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