CARLA CAVINA
(Bayamón, Puerto Rico, 1975)
Me or Saturnian Robot (from the Game of Shadows series), 2020
Photograph printed on aluminum
MAB’s permanent collection (Donation from the artist)
In Roman mythology, Saturn symbolizes time, life-devouring hunger, navigation, dynamism and communication. Some masters of symbolism refer to Saturn as an androgynous deity with ambiguity of gender. Furthermore, it is associated with the land and the color black (Cirlot, 1997).
The artist remarks on her artwork:
The confinement due to the pandemic meant for me a forced encounter with my loneliness and a deepening of my gender dysphoria through self-portrait. During this time I immersed myself in the study of psychological astrology which helped me see my shadows as internal and contradictory characters that whisper within me. The astral map of my psychological labyrinth and the tensions between the planets Pluto, Saturn, and the Moon were the key to creating this series of self-portraits called: “Game of Shadows”, from which “Me or Saturnian Robot” emerges..