Elizabeth Zvonar
Gattamelata, 2020
vinyl
Courtesy of the artist and Daniel Faria Gallery

Part of the exhibition Aporia (Notes to a Medium) at the Belkin, Elizabeth Zvonar’s digital collage Gattamelata re-examines female representation to open up a rewriting of accepted histories, offering a space for projection and shifted consciousness. The work combines fragments of black and white representations of Leonardo Da Vinci’s painting Mona Lisa (1503-06), a cut-out silhouette of Donatello’s Equestrian Statue of Gattamelata (c. 1453) which depicts a military captain, and abstracted architecture of the Basilica of San Antonio (1232-1310), which, like the statue, is located in the Piazza del Santo, Padua. In Zvonar’s collage, the male figure on horseback is cut away so that a version of the Mona Lisa’s face appears through the void, with her arms – enlarged and coloured – serving as a grounding for all that she carries.

This presentation of Elizabeth Zvonar’s Gattamelata is a collaboration with the Walter C. Koerner Library made possible by the generous support of the Audain Foundation. Art in the Library offers new perspectives on contemporary art by presenting art that challenges our perceptions about the world around us.