Paula Rego: Secrets of Faith

Victoria Miro presents “Secrets of Faith,” an exhibition of Paula Rego featuring her radical depictions of episodes from the life of the Virgin Mary and on view at Victoria Miro, Venice. The show, curated by Cecilia Alemani, features Rego’s series of “Mary” works made for the chapel of the Palácio de Belém, with additional works from the cycle and a number of related watercolors which depict Mary in terms of the lived experience of women. The artist uses dramatization and ethereal depictions both to enhance the Virgin Mary’s iconography and to challenge traditional, art-historical norms by depicting her pain and pleasure, astonishment and fear, through the lens of personal experiences–pregnancy, young motherhood, and grief. These defiantly unsentimental works are decidedly earthly, subjecting Mary’s body to forces which the viewer viscerally feels. In Rego’s own words, “Of all my pictures, these were the most fun to make.”