an agitation of hands

I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions.

Whatever I see, I swallow immediately.
Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike
I am not cruel, only truthful –
The eye of a little god, four-cornered.
Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall.
It is pink, with speckles. I have looked at it so long
I think it is a part of my heart. But it flickers.
Faces and darkness separate us over and over.

Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me.
Searching my reaches for what she really is.
Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon.
I see her back, and reflect it faithfully
She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands.
I am important to her. She comes and goes.
Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness.
In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman
Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.

                                           

Mirror, Sylvia Plath

Providence, Rhode Island 1975-78

House 4, Providence Rhode Island, 1975-76

Space 2, Providence Rhode Island, 1975-76

Francesca Woodman's haunting images speak of desire, death, and longing through bodily possession. She performs the female body as a sensual surface, a site which can mark and be marked by the immediate environment. She hovers over doorways or disappears into walls like a living ghost; she is a luminous apparition made of flesh. Woodman's corporality imprints time and leaves behind a silent silver trace.

During her short career from 1972 until her death in 1981, Francesa Woodman produced nearly 800 photographs (only about 120 have been exhibited). This spring, Espacio AV will present Francesca Woodman.retrospective which includes previously unseen photographs and videos by the artist.

Francesca Woodman. Retrospective, Espacio AV, Murcia, Spain February 27-May 11, 2009