A Cielo Chiuso is a work in glazed ceramic. The sculpture, a single umbilical body in the centre, immediately conjures up the image of a belly, a round, soft and feminine belly. The title is borrowed from an expression used in surgery that refers to operations performed through minimally invasive access and therefore without exposure of the internal environment. Through the central slit, the viewer becomes the spectator of a singular ‘intervention’ of introspection: on the sequences of a laparoscopic cholecystectomy surgical procedure, fragments of childhood films scroll by. Through the superimposition of frames, the narrative of an introspective analysis is thus constructed: the anatomy of a woman’s body merges with the anatomy of the artist’s memories, both observed from an internal perspective. Laparoscopy, surgically understood as both an exploratory/diagnostic and therapeutic means, metaphorically becomes the vehicle for such insight. On the other hand, it can be argued that introspection, like the laparoscopic technique, is as much
minimally invasive as it is disruptive in its outcomes: it accesses the subconscious through small breaches to overturn the ego’s scaffolding. A Cielo Chiuso, in 5 minutes, wants to induce the viewer to look inside himself, establishing a causal link between the fragments of his own experience and the structure of his emotional anatomy.

VENERE!

glazed terracotta
43x28x28 cm
2024

VENERE! is a work made of terracotta using the colombino technique. The sculpture is articulated in a single block, in which the sketches of a head and a body can be recognised, and in two cordoniform elements that act as a bridge between the two segments.
Right from its title, the work evokes the tradition of Palaeolithic Venuses, generic and anonymous representations of femininity, widespread among prehistoric cultures as objects with magical and propitiatory significance. Small and compact statuettes, so that they could be easily transported by nomadic peoples, Venuses were depicted as buxom women with pronounced sexual attributes, but their heads and limbs rudimentarily hinted at. In VENERE! femininity is suggested by shy sinuosity, while breasts and hips are not clearly discernible. Instead, bumps and knots emerge from the soft volumes that seem to lift the surface like under-skin nodules. The ceramic material, solid and dense, becomes a thin veil through which transpires the suffering of the body that arrives at extreme deformation in response to the need to contain what would otherwise overflow: the trauma of objectification, the violence of categorisation and the finalisation of female corporeity. Deformation is understood as a metaphor for somatisation, an exquisitely human phenomenon that consists of rendering organic – hence projecting onto the body – a psychic conflict, with manifestations on the various apparatuses. Unlike Palaeolithic women – almost microcephalic -, in VENERE! the head has its own specific weight: its reclining pose does not tell of self-pity, but introspection and self-awareness. The two cords also create an obvious conjunction between head and body, two power units attentive to absorbing and processing input from the outside world.
The chromatic choice of the enamel, an intense magenta, is not accidental. It distantly echoes the red ochre attributed to the original features of the Venus of Willendorf, but above all the fuchsia-violet of the feminist struggle. VENUS! conceals, finally, in its title a further level of meaning: the vulgarity, here made explicit by the exclamation, of the coarse and often sexual appreciation to which the woman as a woman is subjected.