"The song of Inanna" - Liliana Kleiner - The Tribal Art & Culture Gallery

Dr. Liliana Kleiner is a visual artist, a Jungian therapist who specialises in analysing dreams and exploring female mythology. In her work and life she bridges cultures and continents, cuts boundaries and labels and brings a vision of global culture and the revival of female sanctity.

The story of Inanna

Dr. Kleiner’s remarkable works are dedicated in this exhibition to Inanna, the great Mesopotamian goddess. She is the goddess of love and war that has played a central role in the popular consciousness of most ancient peoples in the Middle East. Inanna later became known as Ishtar or Anat. Inanna’s stories were engraved on clay about 6,000 years ago, found in Iraq in the XX century and translated into both English and Hebrew. The stories were written before the Bible and the Koran at a crucial time in the history of civilization when the way of nomadic life was replaced by agricultural settlement. And so this spirituality of the nomadic matriarchal societies that lived in harmony and will be seen from nature has been destroyed by the takeover of patriarchal monotheism and the conquest of wild nature for human needs.

Sacred femininity still exists in the wild, where the hand of man has not yet tamed and raped Mother Earth for his needs and exploitation. As we experience nature in its wild power and beauty, we are encouraged to bow to it in awe and to feel with deep humility that we are only a tiny part of the wondrous universe.

Inanna’s stories have the potential to inspire new forces in us. Ancient wisdom can touch feelings and insights buried deep in our collective subconscious for generations and inspire the self-exploration required for sustainable change from the root. Inanna’s path offers a way of internal, personal integration and participation of all life on Earth. Inanna brings healing to our wounded heart and opens new doors to perfection.

The exhibition

Dr. Kleiner has devoted a decade of her life to studying the miraculous image of the Mesopotamian goddess. She says the exhibition is dedicated to Inanna, who represents perfection before the patriarchal split was rooted, “a prostitute or a good woman”.

“I hope my works will evoke an unconscious place among women and remind them of a time when the female body was sacred and connected to nature, spirit and land and the woman belonged to herself and not to any man”.

Through her paintings, Kleiner tries to restore spirituality to the material and sensuality, strength and joy to the female body.