Gigi Bon, the Rhinoceros, Venice, and the Unbearable Heaviness of Being.

Abstract

This article analyses the oeuvre of the Venetian artist Gigi Bon whose distinctive attitude to her city and the rhinoceros inspired this special issue and the exhibition which preceded it. To enter the Studio d’Arte “Mirabilia” of Gigi Bon is to be introduced to a world of sculptures, prints, and objects of wonder in the tradition of the sixteenth-century Wünderkammer or Cabinet of Curiosities. But more than this, it is an entrée into the mind and active working studio of an artist who has a unique vision, developed over almost thirty years, of the profound links between her own identity, that of the city of Venice, and the predicament of the rhinoceros. Her artistic output, and in particular her mixed media lost-wax bronze sculptures, prints, and sizeable silken scarves incorporate elements of the precious, the rare, the fantastical, and the whimsical, and all reflect profoundly on themes of self, Venice, and the rhinoceros.