This shoe sculpure is part of a series of 20 sculptures of shoes dedicated to the most relevant women in history, literature, cinema and comics. This project has been commissioned by Superstudio Milan and ANCI, and chosen as opening event for the MICAM 2006.
Anneliese Marie Frank
Two women with different and marked destinies, the same historical period. During a dictatorship time as the Nazi Regime, a woman with the passion for the cinema, Leni Riefensthal, benefits of the largest creative freedom as few directors ever had in any other part of the world and time. Photographer, screenwriter, editor and director, with her 'Olympia' she introduced such innovative techniques and style to make her Berlin’s Olympiad documentary one of the biggest cinematographic models ever.
Meanwhile, a Jewish girl, Anne Frank, struggled hard days inside a concentration camp, deprived of every sort of freedom and dignity. A diary, which pages were abruptly interrupted and transmitted as sad news until us. I created two opposite sandals, working with the symbology that comes to my memories for their very opposite stories. Leni’s sandal is made of photographic film and it has got a swastika for heels. The crocked cross is the oriental one, that stands for 'universal peace'. This symbol has been re-interpreted by Nazism that applied to the swastika an inclination of 45 degrees for more aggressiveness. The half a swastika symbolized Nazism’s end but it is also the incapability to achieve worldwide peace; the fact that is positioned under the heels of its major artist it is the recovery’s symbol of intellectual freedom. In Anne’s sandal I realized two transparent plastic heels that contained ash, miserable product of lager’s crematories and two sashes made of beads barbed wire, physical and psychological barrier to the freedom of human being.
Courtesy of Daniele Fontana at Whitenoisephotography 2007.
