La linea d'acqua addresses the theme of memory through an intimate and metaphysical research on the transience of things, the elaboration of loss; it is a reflection on the representation and aesthetics of trauma, an attempt to resolve the fracture between the individual and the external world, between individual and collective memory.
Sara Palmieri is a visual artist who mainly uses photography and its processes. She explores the physical properties of the medium and the linguistic and aesthetic possibilities of images, implementing a process of fragmentation and reconstruction of physical and emotional spaces, fascinated by the representative capacity and limits of photography; by how accurately it reflects reality and how incompletely it carries out the task of memory.
The work finds its origin in the memory of the Polesine flood of November 14, 1951, the biggest ever in Italy, which marked a line of separation between a before and an after of a peasant culture with its traditions, and left an indelible fracture in people and places.
The artist carries out a reflection on the territory, on its ability to contain signs and to hand down traces. The research process takes place through various devices and on different levels of reading. The water of the river, the landscape, the tales of those who were there or have been handed down are devices, and the space of the image is a device, a perceptive surface where the encounter between opposite dimensions takes place: visible and invisible, past and present, submerged and emerged, abstract and concrete, fluid and solid.
The impossibility of memory to faithfully hand down the history, fragmented in the story of those who remain, and of the landscape to preserve visible signs, generates matrices, portals, images whose horizon vibrates, spatial archetypes that unfold and change like echoes of an imaginary Morse code, a system of signs that refers to languages used to communicate and ask for help: minimal gestures, to translate and extract from oblivion the traces in dissolution.
On a metaphorical borderline, Sara Palmieri generates a place where a short-circuit can happen, from where symbolically a sound wave unfolds, a communication between two parts, through a process in which the water of the Po river also physically participates. The space of the image is thus invested with more relationships and reproduces the events of the places, letting submerged truths emerge.
Text from the solo exhibition at Fonderia 20.9 curated by Fiorenza Pinna
La linea d’acqua, Fonderia 20.9
27.11.21 - 08.01.22
Project winner of The Urbanautica Institute Awards 2020, finalist for the Prix Mentor 2020 and The Francesco Fabbri Award for the Contemporary Arts 2021
Exhibitions:
La Linea d’Acqua, solo show curated by Fiorenza Pinna, opening 27 Novembre 2021 until 8 January 2022, Fonderia 20.9 - Verona, Italy
Premio Francesco Fabbri per le Arti Contemporanee exhibition, curated by Carlo Sala, opening 27 Novembre 2021 until 19 December 2021, Villa Brandolini - Solighetto di Pieve di Soligo (Treviso), Italy
La Linea d’Acqua, PhMuseum Days 2022 International Photography Festival, 29.09.2022 - 02.10.2022, Bologna, Italy
Texts and reviews:
Interview by Rachele Ceccarelli for Corpo Opaco
Interview by Angelica Rivetti for Fonderia 20.9
Review on Atp Diary
For a pdf with the editions or enquires please email info@sarapalmieri.com or contact Fonderia 20.9