Chiara Camoni

Chiara Camoni’s solo exhibition, curated by Cecilia Canziani and Ilaria Gianni, offers a space of meditation. Creating a sort of extended self-portrait, the show gathers together works from different times in the artist’s life, as well as newer installations, ranging from video to sculpture to painting and drawing. Like a paleontologist, the artist excavates the origins and nature of creativity and of her many media.

La neve gialla (Yellow Snow), (all works cited 2015), a performance staged at the show’s opening for a limited audience, told a story inspired by the artist’s childhood. A magic lantern containing a candle, projecting colorful figures as well as texts, offered a reexamination of the Platonic cave and referenced the direct antecedents of cinema. In the first room, terra-cotta sculptures arranged on an L-shaped table appear to be articles from a distant civilization that play a role in rituals and beliefs tied to the cycles of nature. The artist calls these primordial creatures “Ninesse,” and they seem to have been inspired by the Great Mother, a universal fertility symbol that many have posited has been present in mythologies since Neolithic times.

Nearby, two paintings are almost invisible on the walls, executed in pure tempera, prepared by hand using eggs and pigment and applied to paper. In the second room are two more works, Il Tronco e il Trapezio (The Trunk and Keystone), and Vasi (Pots) , made by the artist with others. Another example of collaboration—a frequent aspect of her practice—was a project she executed with her grandmother, who was entrusted to create a series of drawings. That work, La chanteuse au gant (The singer with glove), appears at the entrance of the show. Culling from her own daily life, Camoni creates work that describes people and their values; her art, by virtue of its sincerity and intrinsic poetry, immediately becomes universal.

Translated from Italian by Marguerite Shore.