Rebeka Vaino
The Poetics of Reconfiguration
2025
08.03 - 07.04.2025
Link to the exhibition page of the gallery:
The Poetics of Reconfiguration, Gallery DaSein
Throughout the course of literary history, female figures were, for an extensive period, mere
fantasies crafted by male writers. Gothic literature assigned women the designated role of
"femme fatale" – creastures who destroy men through excessive femininity, both feared and
fetishized by men, existing as antitheses to saintly purity and maternal virtue. Whether idolized or
reviled, women were fundamentally exiled or imprisoned in the patriarchal fantasies.
The exhibition presents works by four young female artists – Nancy Allen, Beatriz Santos, Rebeka
Vaino, and Xie Ziyu – who collectively seek to establish a "mythological" context rooted in their
unique political and physiological experiences. Their practice resonates with Ovid's narrative in
Metamorphoses, where a woman discovers her transformation into a date palm: I imagine myself
as the tree, roots nailing me to earth, soft bark creeping upward to seal my legs. Reaching for my
hair, my hands sprout leaves. These self-expressions are manifestations of the artists'
engagement with the world—fragmented narratives that unfold through murmurs or even
abandoned utterances, with which, the gradual metamorphosis as one form transforms into
another, all unfolding in the present moment.
/.../
Rebeka Vaino's work confronts the immediacy of the corporeal. Through
twisting, interlaced, and gradients of pink, colours mutate beyond decorative function into
declarations and guiding. Vaino fearlessly deconstructs her creations, shaping them into forms
that oscillate between anatomical specimens and nascent organs. In her video works, she
intertwines her personal experience of pole dance with the architectural remnants of her
homeland, creating a meditative fusion of feminine power, desire, memory, and the political
climate.
/.../
"Ah, how often you emerge from ocean's vast swells, mountainous and overwhelming,
conquering waves with your obsidian arch breaking the surf—graceful yet awe-inspiring in your
solemnity!"
- Gallery DaSein