Perishable
Text: Marc Navarro
Published at Sweat, eggs, and onions, Goldrausch Künstlerinnenprojekt, Berlin 2025
In the early 1990s, Angela Carter published a comprehensive anthology focused on traditional fairy tales. The stories Carter selected come from various sources, including famous anthologies such as that of the Brothers Grimm, but also the work of folklorists who compiled stories in regions as diverse as Jamaica, Kashmir, Palestine, and Suriname. What connects all of these fairy tales is that none of the protagonists are male. Of course, there is nothing shocking about this fact. What is somehow exceptional is that, while compiling them, Carter points to the fact that the role of telling these stories and, therefore, of passing them on traditionally fell to women and not to men.
The stories Carter collected are not necessarily intended for children. As we read, we witness violent transformations and sudden mutations. In the section entitled “Unhappy Families,” we find dysfunctional families; while reading through the section “Married Women,” we come to understand that quite often happy marriages are just that: nothing more than a simple fairy tale. In the introduction, the author notes: “The stories in this book, with scarcely an exception, have their roots in the pre-industrialized past and unreconstructed theories of human nature. In this world, milk comes from cows, water from wells, and only the intervention of the supernatural can change the relationship between women and men and, above all, between women and their own fertility.”
By bringing these stories together, Carter wanted to contribute to the recognition of the eccentric, poetic, wise, and perceptive nature of those who, anonymously and through the routine exercise of retelling the same story over and over again, found an opportunity to subvert and distort gender norms and the very logic of reproduction.
Aura Roig’s exuberant paintings and the stories Carter brings together in her book sustain, in my view, analogous forms of narrativity. Both reject the normativity of genre: on the one hand, Roig expands the binary opposition men vs. women that Carter mentioned by blurring the boundaries between the human, the vegetal, and the animal; on the other, the act of storytelling and painting both reveal a similar transformative impulse. If Carter’s protagonists do not meet expectations about what they represent and how they exist in the world, Roig’s paintings subvert logical structures in terms of painting genres and its models. In this regard, it is worth noting that portraiture and still life were once considered minor genres and, consequently, reserved for female artists. A notable example is the seventeenth-century Dutch painter Clara Peeters, who produced celebrated depictions of lavishly set tables, symbolic images mirroring Baroque abundance and opulence. In Roig’s paintings, however, the food and objects appear unbeautified. Instead of flowers blooming, we find juicy fruits and vegetables cut in half, exposing their inner layers, flesh ready to be devoured, as if they were mementos mori or sinister ikebana.
What makes this genre subversion successful is the fact that both fairy tales and Roig’s paintings are supported by structures of representation and transmission that look back on a long tradition and are therefore considered reliable: they are familiar territories that one can visit over and over again. Just as tales adopt a pre-established narrative structure based on a premise, a climax, and a denouement, the painting accepts its spatial framework, the canvas, as the necessary limit for the story it contains. They are, so to speak, forms of containment for an overflowing imaginative force: frames for an abyss.
The fantastical, cruel, and unconventional worlds that Carter brings together in her anthology could serve as a background story for Aura Roig’s paintings, which similarly present extraordinary events, improbable scenarios, and unusual characters. Regarding the analogies between humans and plants, what these transformations propose is a change of perspective in relation to the represented subject. With their facial expressions and distinctive features, they appeal to our empathy. The radish or the egg cease to be the product of an economic system—that of food production—integrated into a frenetic choreography of markets and consumption; they become unique. Thus, seemingly mundane motifs become expressive sentient entities.
When I visited Aura Roig in May, the artist was temporarily working and living in a complex consisting of several brick buildings, including a majestic water tower, in the municipality of Dahlewitz, in Brandenburg. The view overlooking the vast cereal crops was occasionally interrupted by the sight of planes arriving and taking off from the nearby airport, reminding us of the city only a few miles away.
In the studio, a piercing, agonized cry interrupted our conversation. A sparrow had nested in one of the building’s beams, and the chicks’ beaks peeked out tremulously, begging to be fed. I can’t think of better company for an artist whose work draws on personal experience to explore family bonds, dependent relationships, attachment, and caregiving. Still, there was a sense of transience about the place, quite the opposite of what you’d call home. What those cold walls did offer Roig was an opportunity to work without distraction: “Depending on my mood, I can finish a painting in just a few days.”
On the way back to the train station, Roig pointed into the distance and mentioned that they sometimes went into the woods to walk or run. It is not unusual to see timid animals, like deer, but also fierce and dangerous creatures, such as wild boars. Forests are common settings for fairy tales: they are far from the sun, the darkness creates its own rules, and one encounters various forms of life.
Carter wrote in her introduction that she “wanted to demonstrate the extraordinary richness and diversity of responses to the same common predicament—being alive.” Roig’s paintings reflect both the diversity and the joy of life manifesting in different forms: a loved one’s face appearing on a spaghetti plate or a long-haired egg. These wonders challenge reasoning, and they use humor to do so. Rather than shaping morals or inspiring terror as fairy tales often do, these characters simply appear before us, eliciting compassion. They seem to say, “Look at me, I do exist!” And indeed, they do.
Marc Navarro
