Artist residency at Firm Artlab from 18/10/21 to 18/12/21
Exhibition: 17 and 18/12/21 – 27 and 28/01/22
Le lieu qui te revêt is composed of paintings and collages inspired by the Annunciations by Fra Angelico (Italian painter, 1395-1455).
I extracted a few words or sentences from the analysis that Georges Didi-Huberman carries out in the book "Before the image", of the fresco of the Annunciation that Fra Angelico painted in cell three of the San Marco convent in Florence. These words guided me when making decisions about my pictorial choices:
“Mystery. Frontal white. Contemplation surface, a dream screen. Angelico’s white, this almost nothing visible. The Annunciation, the announcement. The image of everything that devours us in the evidence of dreams. Exegetical work that the use of a pigment manages to deliver itself. What is in front of becomes all around, and the white that the monk was contemplating perhaps whispers to him: I am the place where you live - the cell itself -, I am the place that contains you. Thus, do you make yourself present to the mystery of the Annunciation, beyond representing it to yourself. The place that covers you.”
Oil painting on rice paper, hand sewn, 280 x 176 cm, 2021. Photo Gaethan Dehoux
Oil painting on rice paper, hand sewn. Rice paper size, center : 270 x 127 cm, right : 207 x 98 cm, left : 101 x 45 cm / 102 x 45 cm, 2021. Photo Gaethan Dehoux
Oil painting on rice paper, hand sewn. Rice paper size : 240 x 123 cm and 197 x 61 cm, 2021. Photo Gaethan Dehoux
Réparation, Indian ink and oil painting on rice paper, hand sewn, 350 x 300 cm, 2019
Reparation is a sewn drawing I made for the performance Stanche Mani (a creation of the Giolisu danse company).The energy and fluidity of the dance movement was captured in India ink on rolls of rice paper. The dancer damaged and torn the paper. They had to be repaired, stitched up, to create an "open" structure, constantly patched up.
Collage on paper, 21 x 27 cm, 2021
Gianni Caravaggio, Valentina Perazzini, Natalia Blanch - Yamamo karate club, Brussels.
4 and 5 May 2019
Valentina Perazzini wrote as introduction to the exhibition:
"It’s been a while since I have wanted to gather in a common exhibition visual artists who, like me, are also devoted martial artists (by devoted I mean artists that are equally committed to their visual as well as their martial art); therefore, when I was afforded the opportunity to intervene in a dojo, this event assumed its raison d'être."
Pictures by Alessandro Costanzo
Delicada Urgencia, pencil on paper 62 x 80 cm and 100 x 200 each, 2019 / “When I see the eyes I have in mine tattooed”, thread dyed by hand and crocheted 9 x 173.5 cm, 2016.
Horizontal drawing: …the place, the wound where we speak our silence… Indian ink on paper 182 x 129 cm, 2016. On the wall (left) work by Valentina Perazzini.
On the wall: Delicada urgencia, pencil on paper 31,5 x 33,5 cm, 2019. On the floor: work by Gianni Caravaggio.
Next to the Kamiza (altar): Delicada urgencia, pencil on paper 39 x 58 cm, 2019
Delicada urgencia is a series of drawings made for the exhibition "Keep in touch". The title is from a poem by Alejandra Pizarnik. In her poetry, language (the extreme precision of words and form) opens to silence, to an interior space of a powerful fluidity.
In this series, I wonder specifically about disappearance.
Symbolic disappearance of the ego to let the work (and the movement) emerge. The dojos of aikido and meditation are the perfect places to become aware of one's ego and to modify it, from a selfish ego to a less egoist self.
Disappearance also refers to death. On the one hand I feel the urgency of the movement and I see unfold on the tatami the warlike origin of the techniques and its transformation into disciplines whose aspiration is the harmony between human beings. On the other hand I wonder what it is to die, and therefore to live? In the book The Spirit of Aikido, Kisshômaru Ueshiba writes: “It does not matter how long life lasts, it only lasts a second, renewed by our mind at every moment."
PREMIERE - 12 > 16.11.2019 at 20:00 - Théâtre de la Vie, Brussels
Which kind of reflection can an artist bring on stage about the current social and political environment?
Stanche Mani is a feminist piece about this artistic engagement. Lisa Da Boit dances upon the ashes of Ferocia, her last enraged solo. She now shares the stage with Sophie de Beer that replaces Farah Chammah. They search together, with the complicity of Natalia Blanch as a witness of silence and persistence, for another sense of this broken world, deep in sorrow. Stanche Mani is a poem that keeps together the contradictions of reality, while offering a ray of hope, a light at the edge of darkness.
Concept & choreography: Lisa Da Boit / Text and voice: Sophie de Beer / Interpretation: Lisa Da Boit and Sophie de Beer / Visual universe: Natalia Blanch / Live music: Sofiane Remadna / Lights: Yoris Van den Houte / Direction assistant: Rudi Galindo / Promotion: Frank Barat, Anne Golaz. A creation of Giolisu, in coproduction with Théâtre de la Vie. With the support of Théâtre Marni, Grand Studio, la Roseraie, Centre Garcia Lorca & Espace Magh.
Teaser Stanche Mani: https://vimeo.com/381648327
Video excerpts Alessandra Coppola
Natalia Blanch@
Acrylic paint on the wall, 9 x 6 m, 2008
Digital video PAL 2'52”, 2008
Un moment sur l’aile du vent
Solo exhibition, Espace Vallès, Saint Martin d’Hères, France, 2008
The installation in situ consist of a text/drawing, a wall painting and a video. The text/drawing is the transcription of the sound recording of the childhood memories of my grandmothers transformed into drawing through the sewing of the words, the wall painting is its scale enlarged reproduction. The video shows the writing of my childhood memories at the rate of the narrative of the grandmothers.
Ludwig Foundation of Cuba, Havana, Cuba, 2000.
Performance and installation.
Pencil on vellum paper, 15 x 21 cm, approx. 400 drawings.
Wooden table: 120 cm (h) x 120 cm (w) x 76 cm (d).
I recorded significant sounds of Havana, Cuba. Then I translated them to its pattern which was mixed – in the drawings – with the line wave of my electrocardiogram.