ABOUT THE EXHIBITION

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In Woman of Sayings, Woman of Trouble, La Ruman makes popular sayings her own, using them as a living form of memory. Rather than treating them as inherited, unchanging wisdom, the artist uses them as a narrative device to describe — through images and words — the experiences, perceptions and ways of being in the world of the protagonists of her works.

Her characters are neither entirely invented nor entirely real. They function like the stories told around the kitchen table: with each retelling they shift slightly, yet always evoke a truth everyone recognises. Between exaggeration, humour and intuition, a collective knowledge emerges that needs no explanation.

Built on orality and hyperbole, La Ruman’s stories bring onto the scene neighbours, friends, matriarchs and serial romantics who reappear from one tale to the next. Gossip, confidences and final verdicts form the core of the saying — a brief structure of understanding capable of containing an entire life.

Painting works in the same way as the story. It turns simple anecdotes into icons. Each scene feels as though it has happened countless times before, as if it belonged to a tradition with no specific origin, as if there were no curtain.

In La Ruman’s world, the popular is neither nostalgia nor folklore — it is practical knowledge. A philosophy passed between women where intuition carries as much weight as experience: after all, a madwoman’s eye never gets it wrong.