Finding relatable meaning in today’s flow of data plays an important role in understanding the world we live in and our place in it. Information overload may cause stress and fragmentation. Silence may often seem the only alternative in this threatening disorder. However this data glut also contains the opportunity for creativity and connection.

With the digitalization of the media, our own semiotic production is becoming more and more complex and abundant. Signs are proliferating. There is hardly a space without writing in it or a quiet time to be found. Silence stands in the way of the speeding up of life. Additionally, the built-in silences in speech and writing are being shortened or eliminated by new media technologies. In fact, our knowledge is increasingly experienced, shared, learned, recorded and stored digitally. Our identities are increasingly shaped by faster modes of communication and by the footprints created in the process. When new signs take the place of silence, the relationship between communication and silence becomes more intimate, more microcosmic, and takes on altogether new forms.

The figure is retreating from the sensory overload in order to interpret and connect this chaotic information glut. The pause or introspection is paramount not only to understand the contrasting, fragmented flow of information she is continuously subjected to, but more importantly, the ‘thinking pause’ also becomes a constitutive element of thought itself and therefore of creation. The moment of inspiration comes when chaos and its absence come together.

The figure’s outer layer, made of parcels of text and images, aims at capturing the complexity of human beings, as well as placing subjectivity in correlation with social and cultural factors. In this project the fragments of knowledge become part of the figure; they seem to flow into each other to form a new whole. This new whole, however, is never static or finished. As an innumerable amount of events and encounters concur to form and shape every individual one could also say that human beings are made of various fragments (memories, images, text and people we meet) and therefore made of parts of others. Accepting the fact that we are made of parts of others, may involve dealing with a subjectivity, which expands beyond the subject itself to include otherness and chaos within.

Ignosi (ηγνώση)

Long ago there was a demigodess called Ignosi, whose knowledge was pure and immeasurable. She knew everything of all creation, gods, heroes, and man. She was associated with science, speech, literature, the arts and inspiration. She was also the gatekeeper for the process of gaining knowledge.

However, she was not allowed to to communicate this awareness to humanity.

...So powerful and beautiful were her skills, that not only did she become the most enlightened creature on earth, but she also felt compelled to share her learning with humans, even though that had been strictly forbidden by the Gods. Ignosi defied the gods and became pregnant in order to sow the seeds of 'cognition' on earth. This caught the attention of the gods who believed that humans with this insight and strength could soon become a threat to them.

For this outrageous act of disobedience against the will of the Gods, Ignosi was condemned to death by decapitation. In her last defiant act before passing however, she cleverly managed to communicate fragments of her wisdom to her twin daughters in her womb. Through them, fragments of knowledge and awareness seeped through humanity.

Миф об Игнози

Давным-давно жила на свете полубогиня по имени Игнози.

Её знания были целомудренными и необъятными. Она знала всё о сотворении мира, богах, героях и людях.

Игнози была связана с наукой, языками, литературой, искусством и вдохновением.

Являлась привратницей в процессе получения знаний.

Однако, ей не позволяли передать всё это человечеству.

Знания Игнози были могущественны и прекрасны. Она не только стала самой умной и образованной на Земле, но и очень хотела поделиться ими с людьми.

Боги запретили это.

Игнози бросила им вызов и забеременела, чтобы посеять семена «знаний» на Земле.

Это разозлило богов, которые верили, что люди, став умными и сильными могут вскоре стать угрозой для них.

И Игнози приговорили к смерти.

Совершив дерзкий поступок перед смертью, она умело передала мудрость дочерям-близнецам в её утробе.

Благодаря им к человечеству пришли знания.

In my recent work I have produced sculptures and installations, in which I disrupt the regular arrangement of sentences and words. The resulting lack of order is then manipulated in such a way to obtain a new tangible reality. My aim, with these projects, is to explore the unknown realms between language and not-language, between communication and silence. Silence is often seen as the reverse of language, however silence is an integral part of the message, as not only does it divide and link sentences, but it is also to be found inside of them and is, furthermore, inhabited by them as well. To communicate is to put into language (spoken, written, digital, visual, sound), a process which establishes the boundary between static order and incomprehensible chaos. This boundary between order and chaos is constantly in a state of flux and forever being redrawn.

The figure’s outer layer, made of parcels of text and images, aims at capturing the complexity of human beings, as well as placing subjectivity in correlation with social and cultural factors. In this project the fragments of knowledge become part of the figure; they seem to flow into each other to form a new whole. This new whole, however, is never static or finished. As an innumerable amount of events and encounters concur to form and shape every individual one could also say that human beings are made of various fragments (memories, images, text and people we meet) and therefore made of parts of others. Accepting the fact that we are made of parts of others, may involve dealing with a subjectivity, which expands beyond the subject itself to include otherness and chaos within.

In this work, as well as in "The Question is Never About the Truth" the regular arrangement of sentences and words is disrupted. The resulting lack of order or “shredded chaos” is then manipulated in such a way to obtain a new tangible reality, in which chaos and silence cease to function as binary opposites. Chaos and silence become symbiotic and are dependent on one another. My aim, with these projects, is to explore the unknown realms between language and not-language, between communication (and its chaos causing misunderstandings), and silence (the chaos of the unsaid). In this context, chaos can be seen as a constitutive element of signs production in both language and silence. Silence is often seen as the reverse of language, however silence is an integral part of language, as not only does it divide and link sentences, but it is also to be found inside of them and is, furthermore, inhabited by them as well.

For "125451 Words: A Thesis submitted for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy" I have painstakingly glued together, layer after layer, the shredded and jumbled words that once formed my thesis. It took me four years to select, order the existing knowledge on the topic and to formulate my contribution. I spent interminable hours determining the right boundaries between static order and incomprehensible chaos. Through shredding and reshaping my thesis into a still and impenetrable object I have drawn attention to the fact that the boundary between order and chaos is constantly in a state of flux and forever being redrawn.

War and power have been recurring theme in Manuela's practice. During the Iraq war she was particularly concerned with the meaning of words such as ‘war’ and ‘peace’, and the different roles played out by ‘women’ and men’ in war time. In her work she questioned weather and why we, as individuals, are capable of such acts, Although we may recoil in horror at newspaper reports of atrocities carried out by human beings upon each other in the name of ‘war’. If we are the rational beings we often define ourselves as, why do we continue to repeat the same fruitless patterns?
To explore these themes she uses photography, turning the media itself on its head, by deconstructing the conventional photographic form through the manipulation, cutting, bending and knitting of images to take the photograph beyond its traditional two-dimensional confines.

Women are often the victims or considered the price for the winner, hence the feminine dress as representation of the role of women in war.

War is mainly a male activity. Anthony Stevens, for instance, in his book 'The Roots of War and Terror' provides insights into the nature and origins of armed conflict. He exposes war as an ancient propensity rooted in human psychology - particularly in the psychology and anatomy of the human male.

In these knitted works, even when they emulate an object or dress, the representation of the land plays an essential role. The land and what there is underneath is a cause of war too (e.g. Iraq war).

In this artwork the artist knitted together images of Darfurian girls and women cultivating farmlands or seeking water and firewood with their traumatic stories of mass rape and violence.

The motivation to reproduce objects suggestive of the female body was prompted by the news of the Darfur Genocide, especially with reference to the mass slaughter and rape of Darfuri women and children in Western Sudan. The killings began in 2003 and was the first genocide in the 21st century.

Moreover, the Darfur genocide, an appalling, brutal and systematic attack against humanity seemed to evade the attentive eye of the international media, and the suffering of the Darfurian people was felt as a distant echo in the West. The artwork "Save the Last Dance for Me' could be seen as a reminder of the lost opportunities to take action and stand against this atrocity.

With this artwork the artist draws attention to the fact that rape and sexual abuse are not just a by-product of war but are used as weapons of war, as an orchestrated combat tool often used in ethnic conflicts as a way for attackers to perpetuate their social control and redraw ethnic boundaries.

With this project MG addresses the notion of fragmentation, long associated as a negative aspect of female identity, as a positive quality, that is not specifically feminine, but an aspect of our contemporary condition.

2.1 Three Businessmen –triptych

For this triptych the artist cut a photograph of three businessmen, photographed at the Economic Forum in Davos, into strips. By knitting the photographic strips together, she deconstructs and demystifies the idealization of values, such as the heroic, the aggressive, the optical rational that is often associated with the masculine. The businessmen, once seen discussing alleged important  business, have ceased to look powerful.

2.2 My mother, my Daughter and Me

For this triptych MG took images of her mother, daughter and herself and cut them into strips and then knitted them together. As in ‘Three Businessmen, there are still three people involved, but what link them together is not business or power. They represent three generations of women. In this triptych the cutting and knitting of the images does not ‘make’ the relationship between the women less powerful. On the contrary, the bond that unify grandmother, mother and daughter becomes even stronger. One could contest that women can’t loose power, as they don’t have any. But who define what power is? Isn’t the relationship between mother and child incredibly powerful?

Objects and their classification have always been very important to the social classification of people. The first logical categories were social categories: the first classes of things were classes of men, into which things were integrated. “Things” were thought to be an integral part of society, and it was their place in society, which determined their place in nature.

‘Unspoken social convention’ and their representation were and still are used in the world of business, politics and in everyday life to denote power. When there are more than one object placed together the organization of these ‘objects’ in a given space determines their individual meaning.

With this installation the artist aims to recreate a management-board-room, commenting on the theme of power. Her aim is to further the understanding of the representation and display of power and promote the discussion of those tacit conventions that instantaneously point to power. This insight will enable us to acknowledge the cultural relativity of our society.

The Seven Deadly sins : A Meditation is an exercise in excess. Models were asked to research and meditate on Anger, Envy, Gluttony, Greed, Lust, Pride and Sloth, and then perform them in front of the camera. They had to dig into themselves and search for the particular emotions that each sin generated and then translate those emotions into a single image. 

The resulting portraits are a contradiction in terms. 
On one side, even though one cannot read the model’s personality or identity from the photographs exhibited, the attempt to transform their emotional depth from the original idea of each sin does result in a highly personal performance. 
The shared topics throughout the photographs are not only about being destroyed by your own desire, but also about the multiplication or repetition within the subject. This repetition points to the impossibility of a singular, unitary self. Identity is thus positioned not as stable and uniform but acted out, multi-layered and fragmented.
Instead of reinforcing the unique individual, the multiple-portraits shows the multiplicities of the self and rigid concepts about identity are deconstructed. Rather than positioning the photographic portrait as representative of a unitary individual, each image situates subjectivity as fragmented and predicated on continually shifting contexts and performances of self. Of course the final images not only pose the question of the openness and honesty of the sitter, but also whether facial expression can authentically convey inner sensations. Is there a connection between interior emotional life and exterior physicality? The multiple representations of the same sitter in the 7 Sins project question the link between identity and appearance. The idea that a portrait can necessarily reveal the character and interiority of a unitary subject from the external representation of a face is problematic. The term "likeness, " which brings with it an idea of truthfulness, is an imprecise term. Richard Brilliant argues that: `Likeness is a mental construct, or image, varying as each perception of another may vary, but only the portrait artist can render such a transient image visible and fixed. In the end, coincidence of perception, not truthfulness, is the true measure of validity in portraiture. ' (Richard Brilliant. Portraiture. London: Reaktion Books, 1991). 
Although the representation of profound subjective experience is impossible without resorting to metaphorical or symbolic means, during the realization of the 7 Sins project the artist came to the conclusion that the body provides, nevertheless, a strong and compelling ‘benchmark’ for comparison and differentiation.