Patricia Cronin

Shrine for Girls, Venice

Solo Collateral Event of the 56th International Art Exhibition – la Biennale di Venezia
Curated by Ludovico Pratesi, Presented by Brooklyn Rail Curatorial Projects
Chiesa di San Gallo, Venice, Italy
May 6 – November 22, 2015

Patricia Cronin, Shrine for Girls, Venice
La Biennale di Venezia - 56th International Art Exhibition
Photo : beverly joel

Although the United Nations passed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, women and girls around the world continue to be among the most vulnerable members of our global society. Often facing violence, repression, and enforced ignorance, this young female populace is subjected to a horrifying existence on earth.

Inside the exquisite sixteenth-century Church of San Gallo, where Bill Viola showed in 2007, New York-based conceptual artist Patricia Cronin has created a shrine in their honor. For over two decades, critically acclaimed artist Patricia Cronin has created compelling works, many with social justice themes focusing on gender. Here, she has gathered hundreds of girls’ clothes from around the world and arranged them on three stone altars to act as relics of these young martyrs. Commemorating their spirit, this dramatic site-specific installation is a meditation on the incalculable loss of unrealized potential and hopelessness in the face of unfathomable human cruelty; juxtaposed against the obligation and mission we have as citizens of the world to combat this prejudice

Works
All Photos by Mark Blower