Today it is really cloudy, and embroidering in these conditions for me, who does not like artificial light, is complicated; I take this opportunity to tell you about the new project I am working on, which I am very passionate about and which has led me to experiment for the first time with embroidery on photographic shots, after Food punk, about which I will tell soon, in which, however, I intervene on paper prints.
I met Pasquale Liguori about ten years ago for work reasons; only after a few years I happened by chance to see his photographic shots, which affected me deeply, and a few months ago I proposed to him to intervene on some of his images, introducing him to the world of embroidery on paper/photograph, which still few people know about, incredibly vast and interesting, deeply evocative and meaningful.
I find this mode of expression particularly effective in expressing the relationship between past and present, between physical reality and the vital energy that circulates and permeates human beings and the objects around them, and their interactions. Embroidery in a sense animates the photographic shot, gives it three-dimensionality and intensifies its message, making it more immediate.
The series of Pasquale’s shots I focused on portrays the Roman borgate, dwellings built in the Fascist era for the poorer classes and the underclass; an investigation of the capital’s urban sprawl and at the same time a reflection on the human load of these structures.
The shots are analog, taken over the years with a view camera at 5 a.m. on Sundays, the time when there is the greatest concentration of people in the buildings, and the greatest neutral, collective energy, that of night rest.
When I was confronted with these silent images, I wanted to add a new layer to them, to highlight the pulsation of the human life force that defines and characterizes the objects that surround us and that we use; the quantum correlation hitherto almost unknown to most, which is fundamental to the true understanding of our lives, of our responsibilities to each other and to the environment, of how much each of our actions and thoughts affects the whole.
I think I will have more for at least a month! It’s not easy for me because hand embroidery is by its very nature a slow, meditative art, and while I meditate I can think of a hundred other projects to experiment with, watch from their racks the embroideries waiting to be completed, I would like to devote myself to a million other things. Embroidery is somewhat my spiritual guru, teaching me order and patience.
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