“It sounds like the noise of chains,

Dragging on the pebbles.

It’s the great Lustucru who is passing” (An old French lullaby)

The Second of the Seven White Witches of Lustucru

Artist Etienne Farrell’s latest exhibition, Lustucru, investigates human emotions and phobias in a collection of 31 works in various media that include metal and clay sculpture, clay relief, photography, videography and watercolour.

The origins of Lustucru

The strange title of the exhibition has not been creatively coined by the artist herself. It owes its origins to a 17th century French almanac in which a character, Lustucru, a blacksmith turned brain surgeon, or operateur cephalique, first morbidly appears.

His patients, or rather victims, are unwilling women who have been judged to be difficult and who antagonised their husbands’ hegemony. The dark sexist satire dehumanises the wives through a purging by the pseudo brain surgeon. In some prints of the time, the women are pictured as undergoing procedures, some even getting decapitated, in a process purported to clear their brains from anger, indiscretions and rebellion, thus succumbing to their husband’s whims through this drastic straightening out.

The etymology of Lustucru originates from the slurring of a stock phrase L’eusses-tu-cru, used by theatrical jesters of the time. It can be literally translated as “Would you have believed it?” but, when transposed to the Lustucru context, it proclaimed: “Would you have thought a woman’s head could be fixed?”

This chauvinist 17th century scenario, amid the indecency of witch trials and the Church’s inquisition, couldn’t stomach intelligent and learned women. It proclaimed them as harlots, witches and heretics as their knowledge emasculated the idiots who wanted these proficient and talented women to be burnt at the stake or hanged.

Can you Hear my Silent Screams

Lustucru epitomised this backlash, these pogroms against womanhood and the character became the stalwart for those who thought that the female brain threatened the status quo of a stagnant and repugnant, male-dominated society.

Farrell transposes this miso­gyny to contemporary times through her depictions of seven witches, representing womanhood that is still being victimised, manipulated and misunderstood to this very day, their red tear-stained eyes the fruit of incomprehension and inflicted violence.

Ostracisation and not belonging

Ostracisation, however, is not endemic to the female of the species. Farrell insists the concept behind the exhibition is an all-encompassing one and not gender specific. Gender pigeonholes society to norms that are insensitive to empathy, to the feelings of a particular person who is at times looked down upon as an iconoclast and a troublemaker.

Being sexy and popular has more value than learning and thinking

Fixed

The artist defies these attempts at stereotyping, especially in a world dominated by social media that has proclaimed influencers as the dystopic paragons of a brave new world where all are pressured to be inclined towards mediocrity.

The sorry state of the planet and the authorities’ impotence at tackling the sources that are precipitating an ecological catastrophe of progressively irreversible proportions contributes to an apathy, a helplessness that Farrell feels towards a world that is unresponsive to her fears and preoccupations. Moreover, social pressures that urge one to fit in and conform provoke an allergy in the artist who is a free spirt, an overwhelming kicking in of histamine to the 21st century realities.

The symptoms of this existential discomfort are a sadness and an overpowering gloom at being misunderstood and criticised for being at odds with most things. In Farrell’s words: “Being labelled as crazy, different, defiant – in a world where using one’s brains seems to be discouraged – and being sexy and popular has more value than learning and thinking.”

Crowned (detail)

Masks and their relevance

Masks, widely used during Halloween and carnival in pre-pandemic times have now become an item of fashion as their pro­perties in keeping pathogens at bay during this past year or so have been extolled relentlessly.

Thanks to COVID-19, we are revisiting medieval and Renaissance times with their plagues that butchered whole populations and impacted life in gene­ral. Farrell reinterprets the archaic beak masks of the bubonic plague that in those days were naively thought to provide some measure of protection from infection. Notwithstanding the advances in the medical field, mankind has been dealt a severe blow to its dignity as its social structures and behaviours were brought to a halt.

The First of the Seven White Witches of Lustucru

The mask, serving in pre-COVID times as a prop in dressing up for parties and fun-loving occasions, has ominously been repurposed as a scant barrier to an environment which could harbour the pestilent virus. Fashion has tried to make light of and exploit the phenomenon, seeking to make financial gain out of a dramatic situation by drawing on the general human 21st century weakness of making a fashion statement.

Farrell’s masks are certainly not demonstrations of flamboyance. Although the beak mask has been theatrically used as a prop in the Commedia dell’Arte character of Il Medico, it was still a morbid representation of death, even though transposed to an artistic and fun context. It is within this perspective that Farrell reinterprets the iconic mask, which, when worn,  conceals the wearer’s identifying facial features. The wearer then can shift into character and is crowned with a new persona.

These masks for Farrell exhibit huge semiotic relevance as she quests to retract into herself, into solitude; she is comfortable being labelled “an introvert/antisocial/deranged being rather than following the current just like a dead fish”.

Revenge

In later 17th-century engravings of Lustucru, the women have turned the tables on their worst nightmare and are depicted bashing their torturer’s brains in. There is a lesson to be learnt here as the message delivered is ominous for bigoted men: if women put their heads together, men stand no chance and women can crush men.

Lustucru, the personage that haunted the dreams of the French independent-minded 17th-century women, has his followers in our contemporary society that still thrives on exploitation of women to further its agenda and feels menaced by empowered women.

This is an exhibition about concealment and exorcisms, about loneliness and its benefits amid a pandemic world that still insists on being superficial and boisterous. Perhaps we need to summon a Lustucru to pummel our heads and knock in some awareness, while highlighting what’s so essentially wrong with this godforsaken century.

Lustucru, hosted by the Malta Council of the Voluntary Sector, St Bartholomew Street, Rabat, is opening today and runs up to July 11. Follow the Facebook page Etienne Farrell Art for more details regarding the opening dates and times. ALS Malta was chosen as the voluntary organisation to benefit from the Lustucru exhibition.