Performance of Fine Arts of the artist Giulia Rosini. Curated by lecturer Simone Cametti. RUFA Space, 18 – 19 May 2022.
Critical text by Valeria De Siero
“Colore inonda la macchia, porpora cupo.
Tutto slavato è il resto del corpo,
ha colore di perla.
In un anfratto di rupe
risucchia il mare ossessivamente,
un solo vuoto è perno di tutto il mare.
Non più grande che una mosca
il marchio funesto
striscia già per il muro.
Il cuore si chiude,
il mare cala,
gli specchi sono schermati.”
With these words, Sylvia Plath reveals the imaginative potential behind the different stages of a Contusion. Like the American poetess, Giulia Rosini is captivated by those wounds because of their hues, which the artist depicts on paper, enhancing their colours. From this fascination springs the performance, in which her research is extended; no longer is the chromaticism of a skin lesion called into question, but that of certain parts of the body.
In the field of visual arts, from the very beginning, the body and its anatomical structures have been the object of study; I am thinking of the various ‘studies of hands’ or Albrecht Dürer’s Study of two feet. One looks for poses, attitudes of these parts of the body, and even the variety of surfaces, young or older skins, or even physiognomy, longer or shorter fingers, thicker or thinner. With Giulia Rosini’s work, there is a further step that investigates colour, a virtual and varying colour, which departs from the ordinary colour of a hand or a foot, to accommodate unknown nuances.
Research that takes place through trauma: with a nylon thread, the artist now compresses the ankle, now the toes, now the wrist, now the phalanges. A violent action.
I wonder at this point about the meaning of the word trauma, a term of Greek derivation meaning ‘wound’, and then I come across a very close word, a ‘false friend’, traum, which in German expresses the word ‘dream’. Both terms are linked by an idea of ‘passage’, of ‘crossing over’: just as a dream is the passage from reality to the imagination, so trauma is the passage from a ‘normal’ bodily condition to an injury that alters the body.
It is an intimate diary, which is constructed during the performative act, determining its duration. It is a diary of notes of the colour of his body, perceived through his eyes.
Read the full critical text by Valeria De Siero
Listen to the protagonist’s words
Look at the images of the performance
