Woven ritual investiture made from leather spines of books from a fictional library of primordial female figures.

Engraved treated leather
[185w x 250h x 40d cm]

An immersive sound installation  piece Composed and arranged in collaboration with Catalina Swinburn and Carlos Tanoni music producer and sound designer.

24:15 minutes | 2024

Swinburn has selected names of emblematic women from Christine de Pizan’s ‘The Book of the City of Ladies’ and engraved them as titles into the books of her fictional library, ‘Athena’ (2024). The artist has worked with the leather of the book spine as opposed to its paper contents; creating an image of a dismantled library of page-less books, which acts as a metaphor for the missing narratives of women in history. Through the process of deconstructing books and reweaving this material into an artwork, Swinburn recycles the past into present to create a newly woven narrative, a mythological cloak in appreciation of the revolutionary myths of women throughout history. Functioning as both garment and artwork; when worn, it yields the power to create sacred space for inner transformation, , it instils a divine female presence into the place of worship, historically void of feminine energy. The woven artworks of Catalina Swinburn seek to revalidate the place of women throughout history. Although ‘The Book of the City of Ladies’ was written more than half a millennium ago, it is filled with potent observations for our times, articulating its arguments much in the same way as today’s debate on the equality of women. With this text as the work’s medium, “ATHENE” is an appreciation of the vital feminine contributions to human civilisation across political, spiritual and practical spheres.