‘The distant gaze catapults us into a complete estrangement so that the most mundane things, the most usual habits, become new and surprising objects to study.’

(Gianni Celati in ‘Finzioni occidentali’)

 
I entered the essence of my work, delving into it, to then reach the point of making a lyophilised, concentrated version. The dilated time that unravels along the entire duration of existence is contracted in a tight and compressed form.
In this paragraph there is a focus on shrinking the space that I constructed to condense the entire meaning of my work: the ‘Gestureplace’, where I practise.
The desire to shrink this place (which is simultaneously concrete and metaphorical) to the extent that it becomes an object to place in front of the gaze and not a place that contains me, originated from the need to extricate myself in order to view it from the outside, from a distance, in order to understand it and see it with my mind.
It is as though it had become a symbolic representation of the space, of the meta-place, of the place of thought that I can relate to more with my mind than my body. It is as though I had somehow entered inside this place physically and then left it transformed to access another more abstract and visionary dimension.

Note on the margin: a secular nativity scene. An exercise to see the entirety and her imagination in miniature.
My maternal grandfather was always interested in popular culture and in the objects that expressed it. Among other things, he collected figures for nativity scenes. My father, his son-in-law, an atheist, inherited this passion and continued to build the collection. Together, he and I would go to buy the individual pieces from antique shops in Via Sant’Anastasia in Verona and to go to exhibitions whenever we had the chance. As a girl, I contributed to expanding the collection, giving my father small nativity scenes every year that I bought on my travels.
Later, when I became a parent, I gave my son, my husband and myself a micro-depiction of us: the writer, the historian and the painter, which we put in our Christmas nativity scene.

(Written in 2021. Modified in 2024)