RIGHT to RAGE 

“This is not as simple as saying Female Rage. This is a culmination of repressive experiences, cultural formatting and subsequent exploration of alternative viewpoints which have been simultaneously terrifying, challenging and freeing. During this ecdysis of the cultural shroud Tribambuka has been vulnerable and exposed to every feeling. This exhibition is the controlled explosion of the cultural IED placed in front of her and we shall witness the shards and shrapnel form as paintings in front of our eyes.”

- Karen van Hoey Smith

Right to Rage, a series of new works by British-Russian visual artist Tribambuka, was first shown as a part of Cluster Contemporary Art Fair in OXO Tower Wharf in London, November 2022.

Right to Rage embraces women’s anger as a cathartic and emancipatory force. Female anger in particular is traditionally embedded into patriarchal social narratives as a destructive and dangerous power that needs to be pacified and sublimated. Tribambuka instead makes us reconsider women’s rage as a sign of the violation of boundaries, a reaction to injustice and threat and to things that went wrong in the world, and a “dark” power to be unleashed and reckoned with.

The narrative and imagery around women’s virtues and identities have historically been determined by the dominant perspective of the male gaze and forced into reductive categorical archetypes. Yet women have always sought to challenge this fraught status-quo and to create new imagery and definitions around their identity - be it through literature, art, labour or protest. Female anger is a crucial, progressive force within this historical movement of resistance; and the main focus of Tribambuka's new series of paintings and works on paper.

The artist’s works mix a range of influences from myths, fairy-tales, Jungian archetypes and dreams with feminist history and current socio-political references. Her figurative style is influenced by 20th century movements such as Russian Avant-Garde, Fauvism, Expressionism and Cubism, albeit with what she calls a “feminist pop-folk” twist and the revolutionary flavour of the swinging 60s.

 

As an artist of Russian descent, whose work revolves heavily around the concept of belonging and shifting identities, the current ongoing war initiated by the country she used to call home has had a drastic effect on Tribambuka’s practice and her approach to this particular body of work. The horrors suffered by women in the Russian-Ukrainian war in particular (but all wars historically) struck the artist as a pinnacle of the deep-rooted patriarchal structures of society. Treating women as objectified symbols of the country that has to be conquered, defeated and humiliated reveals how the degrees of misogyny and male violence against women range from the domestic scale up to national warfare.

As a response, the artist was driven to embrace the collective rage felt by her and fellow women, and channel it into her artworks. Her pieces trace the central narrative of women’s struggle to reclaim their voices, stories and power back to various archetypal female characters throughout mythology, such as Medusa, Eurynome, Kali, Judith, the Furies. By retelling their stories from an emancipatory, female perspective, Tribambuka creates a new visual vocabulary around femininity, defined by strength, resistance and rage.

Right to Rage is an experiment of looking at anger more closely and welcoming it into shared discourse as a force that can bring balance and amplify the voices of those unheard. Tribambuka views the exhibition as the start of a conversation, inviting the audience to feel empowered by the ‘monstrous’, furious women of history to share their emotions, thoughts and opinions in response.

Artworks

Furies-3

Furies (Army Of Me)

Size: 150 x 100 x 3.5 cm
Medium: Oil, Acrylics, Oil Sticks, Posca Pens on Canvas


Furies in Roman mythology, or Erinyes in Greek - are female chthonic deities of vengeance. Their task is to hear complaints brought by mortals against the insolence of the young to the aged, of children to parents, of hosts to guests, and of householders or city councils to suppliants — and to punish such crimes by hounding culprits relentlessly. The Erinyes are more ancient than any of the Olympian deities. The children of Gaea and Uranus, they were usually characterised as three sisters: Alecto (“unceasing”), Tisiphone (“avenging murder”), and Megaera (“grudging”). The Furies were always seen as cruel, but at the same time fair in their punishments.

Alecto-2
Tisiphone-1

Alecto

Size: 70 x 50 cm
Medium: Oil, Acrylics, Oil Sticks on Canvas Board

Alecto - one of the Furies, or Erinyes, female chthonic deities of vengeance in ancient Greek mythology. Her name is translated as "the implacable or unceasing anger". Alecto's job as a Fury is castigating the moral crimes of humans, especially if they are against others. Her punishment for mortals was Madness.

Tisiphone

Size: 70 x 50 cm
Medium: Oil, Acrylics, Oil Sticks on Canvas Board

Tisiphone is one of the three Erinyes or Furies. She and her sisters punished crimes of murder: parricide, fratricide and homicide. Her name is translated as "vengeful destruction". According to Hesiod's Theogony, when the Titan Cronus castrated his father, Uranus, and threw his genitalia into the sea, the Erinyes emerged from the drops of blood which fell on the Earth (Gaia), while Aphrodite was born from the crests of sea foam.

Eurynome

Eurynome

Size: 120 x 100 x 3.5 cm
Medium: Oil, Acrylics, Oil Sticks, Posca Pens on Canvas

This is a scene from a Pelasgian creation myth. Pelsagians lived in a matriarchal society which changed into to a patriarchal one under continual pressure from victorious Greek-speaking tribes during Bronze Age. A supreme creatrix, Eurynome, "The Goddess of All Things", who rises naked from Chaos to part sea from sky so that she can dance upon the waves. Catching the north wind at her back and rubbing it between her hands, she spontaneously generates the serpent Ophion, who mates with her. In the form of a dove upon the waves she lays the Cosmic Egg and bids Ophion to incubate it by coiling seven times around until it splits in two and hatches "all things that exist ... sun, moon, planets, stars, the earth with its mountains and rivers, its trees, herbs, and living creatures".
Eurynome and Ophion settled on Olympus, but when he proclaimed himself the Creator, Eurynome kicked all his teeth out and banished him to the netherworld. In place of Ophion, Eurynome assigned the powers of the universe to aseries of couples, each of a male and female Titan. Humans spring up from Ophion's teeth, scattered under the heel of Eurynome.

Free-Today
They-Say-Im-Different

Free Today

Size: 100 x 100 x 1 cm
Medium: Oil, Oil Sticks on Canvas

They Say I'm Different

Size: 100 x 100 x 1 cm
Medium: Oil, Acrylics, Oils Sticks on Canvas

Circe

Circe

Size: 100 x 100 x 1 cm
Medium: Oil, Oil Sticks on Canvas

This work was inspired by the novel 'Circe' by Madeline Miller - retelling a story of goddess Circe from her perspective. Greek myths were told by men (Ovid, Homer, Hesiod, Euripides, Sophocles etc), and interpreted mostly by men too, and now women scholars and writers research and retell the stories from female perspective, showing the other side of the narrative. Here Circe is represented as a powerful witch who has discovered her true self, stopped seeking validation from others and let's be honest, had good reasons to turn /some/ men into pigs.

Bucha
Weight-Of-The-World

Bucha

Size: 80 x 60 x 3 cm
Medium: Oil, Oil Pastels, Carbon Pencil on Canvas

Weight Of The World

Size: 80 x 60 x 3.5 cm
Medium: Oil, Acrylics, Carbon Pencil on Canvas

Euynome-and-Ophion

Eurynome and Ophion

Size: 120 x 100 x 3.5 cm
Medium: Oil, Acrylics, Oil Sticks, Posca Pens on Canvas

Another version of the scene of the conflict between Eurinome and Ophion. 
A supreme creatrix, Eurynome, "The Goddess of All Things", who rises naked from Chaos to part sea from sky so that she can dance upon the waves. Catching the north wind at her back and rubbing it between her hands, she spontaneously generates the serpent Ophion, who mates with her. In the form of a dove upon the waves she lays the Cosmic Egg and bids Ophion to incubate it by coiling seven times around until it splits in two and hatches "all things that exist ... sun, moon, planets, stars, the earth with its mountains and rivers, its trees, herbs, and living creatures". Eurynome and Ophion settled on Olympus, but when he proclaimed himself the Creator, Eurynome kicked all his teeth out and banished him to the netherworld. And humans spring up from Ophion's teeth, scattered under the heel of Eurynome.

Fury-Alecto
FuryMegaera-1
Fury-Tisiphone

Fury (Alecto)

Size: 50 x 40 x 1 cm
Medium: Oil, Acrylics, Oil Sticks on Canvas

Fury (Megaera)

Size: 50 x 40 x 1 cm
Medium: Oil, Acrylics, Oil Sticks on Canvas

Fury (Tisiphone)

Size: 50 x 40 x 1 cm
Medium: Oil, Acrylics, Oil Sticks on Canvas

Too Much

Size: 80 x 60 x 3 cm
Medium: Oil, Acrylics on Canvas

Too-Much
Eurinome_3

Eurynome

Size: 120 x 100 x 3.5 cm
Medium: Oil, Acrylics, Oil Sticks, Posca Pens on Canvas

Medusa
Judith-1

Medusa

Size: 80 x 50  cm
Medium: Oil, Acrylics, Oil Sticks on Canvas Board

‘Medusa isn’t a monster like a dragon. She is a woman who has been raped and punished for it with snakish hair. Her lethal stare is a localised peril: avoid her and you would never be in danger, because she keeps herself far away from mortals. She is damaged first by a God, then by a Goddess. And finally Perseus comes looking for her to kill her and mutilate her, to satisfy a whim of another man. No matter who she encounters - besides her sisters - they only want to kill her.’

Natalie Haynes
Pandora’s Jar

Judith

Size: 80 x 50  cm
Medium: Oil, Acrylics, Oil Sticks on Canvas Board

I-Wish-I-Knew-How-it-Would-Feel-to-Be-Free

I Wish I Knew How it Would Feel to Be Free

Size: 100 x 100 x 1 cm
Medium: Oil, Carbon Pencil, Acrylic on Canvas

During the show in OXO Tower Wharf in 2022 the audeince was invited to answer the question 'What are you angry about', which resulted in a 300 page book, a snapshot of what's wrong with the world as seen from London 2022.

Right to Rage: Solo Exhibition by Tribambuka
part of Cluster Contemporary 2022 Fair

Sign up for updates →→→

All artworks ©Tribambuka 2024