Welcoming art and the artist's look at a known and loved place: this has been the experience for us, as organizers of Art Along the Walls.
A competition announcement has been spread around the web during the winter with the aim of collecting from the artistic community their projects for the walls of Porchiano del Monte, a medieval village in the municipality of Amelia. The works had to be designed specifically for the places, so the competition announcement had many photos attached for an appropriate support.
The selection took place two months before the date had been fixed for the set-up, and following this, the eight artists were supplied the wool or felt for the realization of their work. They then came to Porchiano for preparing their work in the designated places and they were shown great appreciation for all of their hard work.
Spazio Vitale (Living Space) is composed of multiples in the shape of flower, personally installed by the young Bulgarian artist Yana Drumeva on one of the towers. To me, the walls - she explains - are a kind of skin, a part of a living organism: on them, I wished that the flowers could emerge and be as delicate as the felt, but, still, alive and strong, such as felt. Yana does not like to be on the scene, she prefers working in the background, observing nature and the randomness with which life emerges, even in places at first sight incongruous, like a stone wall recently restored.
Part of the landscape of Porchiano are two large pines that, even if only seen in the photos, have inspired Chiara Valentini: she set up a work recalling two mating snails without shells. It is a sensual and prolonged encounter that allows life, the symbol of the contact, the meeting of two bodies, of two beings, two individuals or two elements that come together to create something new. Right away - said the artist while preparing the work for the installation with the staff - the village seemed to be the perfect place to express the encounter between the human reality and nature.
Sonia Stefanutti’s Legami (Ties) is the most typical work of the initiative: a long red tapestry of nine meters by two, with long tails that has been tied to the entrance tower leading to the village. It was set-up on a sunny morning, with the help of a technician operating a cherry picker together with other three people, by the artist and his friend Roberto, supporter and adviser in this big, “out of range” task. Weeks of hard work for felting almost thirty kilos of wool and express love and memories binding Sonia to the nature and life in small towns.
Benedetta Monetti had never worked with felt before, but she was confident to work on site, as she focused on the photo of an abandoned house and had the idea to bring it to life, thanks to new creatures. The forms came out of her work: those are forms that recall parts of the body and have voluntarily demystified the craftsmanship precision by using informal stitching and thermoformable felt.
For Alice Angioni felt is a material that offers the opportunity to express oneself creatively within one’s own rules, in a rigorous process. Her Decimo Cancello (Tenth Gate) is a fusion of materials and ancient techniques with a modern take, as it had to be installed in the village: the plants, set in felt bags with one side facing the town, will have to adapt to the climate, to the environment: they will live, or will even die. The work recalls an ancient alchemical text in which the tenth door is described as the passage in which the elements come together, where they may explode and destroy everything.
Antonella Sabatini led Feltrosa to a new stage of her inquiry into the essence of the feminine: she installed a wicker structure, the most tender and flexible woody plants, describing nine circles connected by fabrics coming from the domestic tradition. Within them, a wool form in the shape of a body is suspended, like a woman's dress. Amelia reminds us that being an artist means to be spotless, the walls sustain and protect her, forming a bridge between the earth and the sky, the union of the masculine and feminine principles.
La Sirena (The Siren), brought by Yulia Orlova from St. Petersburg, combines women and birds and recalls the Russian folklore: it is a benevolent creature, she quotes the myth, but was perfectly placed and understood by the inhabitants of the village, in her enigmatic smile, lying on one of the seats of the walls.
Chiara De Marco was unable to be present when we installed her work Io mi salvo da Sola (I Save Myself by Myself) on one of the many towers of the walls. It s 'a braid, it recalls the fairy tales and ironically evokes a princess of the twenty-first century who knows how to escape from segregation.
Arte lungo le Mura –Art Along the Walls, exhibition of environmental art at Porchiano del Monte – Amelia, 16th -24th May. The exhibition was organized in the occasion of Feltrosa 2013 and sponsored by the Region of Umbria, the Commune of Amelia and DHG.
A second exhibition will be housed at DHG in Prato, in September 2013.
Cielo Pessione put all together in a love a map of the village, tracking with a red mark her experience as an “acquired” inhabitant and the charm of living in an isolated community, looking onto the world from above the walls.
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