Galliéni,Jill
untitled
Jill Galliéni, untitled, no date, ink on paper, 23,9 x 15,6 cm, photo : Atelier de numérisation – Ville de Lausanne, Collection de l’Art Brut, Lausanne
Author
Galliéni,Jill,
(1948), USA
Biography
Jill Galliéni (1948) was born in the United States. She started to make cloth dolls when she was still very young, and at around thirty she began a long series of graphic works: prayers to St Rita, the patron saint of lost causes. These prayers represent an artistic development that has lasted more than twenty years and are the outward sign of Jill Galliéni’s permanent questioning of her spirituality, as well as being a way out of the problems and issues that bedevil her life. The continuous line of her felt-tip pen drawings make her incantations visible. She traces endless series of interlacing letters, like crochet, from which there sometimes emerge recognisably figurative motifs and in other cases abstract ones. Galliéni employs this alternative to writing as a form of protection, as well as a way of keeping the content of her interactions with St Rita secret. She turns to the saint for help on behalf of those near and dear to her, or to ask for her intercession to end some armed conflict in the world, or just simply for herself. As her hand travels across the sheet of paper it performs an act of prayer. Galliéni continued this procedure tirelessly until one day she decided her prayers should no longer be turned into art objects and she has now ceased drawing altogether.
Shop
- Croyances (french version) (Exhibition catalogues)
- Beliefs (english version) (Exhibition catalogues)