https://maria-sucar.github.io/mater-licentia/
2023
The Confessional of Mater Licentia is a website that aims to serve as a confessional for people who have suffered sexual abuse. The work is part of a series that refers to Mater Licentia, a saint created by me with the intention of protecting people who are victims of sexual violence and preventing it from occurring. As part of the affirmation of its existence, I try to construct its symbologies from the appropriation of the functioning logic of the Catholic Church, being the confessional one of the artifices. I think of the confessional as a safe space for verbalizing and understanding the violence suffered, understanding that admitting it, however basic it may be, is often a painful process that involves a lot of denial. Combined with this, I add the layer of the confessional thinking that a large part of the difficulty of verbalization comes from the guilt felt by the victim which is, in turn, potentiated by a Christian guilt that recognizes the victim as an accomplice in his own violence. In “Did the Greeks Believe Their Myths?” Paul Veyne talks about belief as a search for truth, this being part of the perspectives of imagination, in which the author argues that it is not a factor that expands reality, but limits it. Man, then, builds the truth in the same way that he builds history. Based on this idea, I create a truth that delimits other possibilities of reality, working with these same truths that create our present history.
Maria Sucar
Brazil
Degree in visual arts from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte (2021.2-currently) and mediator at Galeria SESC RN (2022-2023). Has participated in exhibitions such as Corpo Vazio (2019), Alfinetasso (2020), Imagem Sensível de Memórias possíveis (2021), EXP2: Estilhaço (2022), Zeitgeist 3.0 (2022) and 6 Salão de Artes Visuais de Caicó (2023).