"Live the questions now..."*
A blog on art/culture/music/etc.
28/10/2024
A REVIEW OF COLLECTING WORDS
Mariangela Gualtieri, Ruvido Umano [Rough Humanity], 2024, Giulio Einaudi editore. *Translated from Italian by H.E for the sole purpose of allowing non-Italians speakers to be able to engage with the text.
Collecting Words [Raccogliere Parole] is the title of Sabrina Mezzaqui’s new solo exhibition at Galleria Continua, San Gimignano. And the idea of collecting words has been the focus of the works on display from so many different angles. Naturally, I want to know the extent of her personal vocabulary. And that’s our starting point when we meet in person. She tells me, she has no idea. For long now, she has assumed the role of a grand puppeteer, art meets nature, magic, and poetry - and for this particular exhibition, the poetry of Mariangela Gualtieri, one of the most influential poets of our day. I hope that I will be able to find the right words to define the strings Mezzaqui pulls on in her artistic practice.
It was during my interview with Jorge Macchi a couple of weeks ago that we talked about how the two exhibitions False Autumn and Collecting Words, currently on display at the main gallery space on Via Del Castello are seamless in their “curatorless” design. There are no awkward interruptions, barriers or separations, the flow is magical. It is almost like being in a hyper-realistic version of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Chapter 1, Down the Rabbit Hole. The moment I approach the old cinema space, I can see Mezzaqui’s new series of silkscreen prints on paper with material elements including one or more actual poplar leaves titled, The best place to hide a leaf is in a forest [Il luogo migliore per nascondere una foglia é un bosco]. Inspired by Jorge Luis Borges’s short-story The Book of Sand [1975], Mezzaqui refers to it as "a short fantastic tale about an infinite book: every time you open it a new page appears but once you close it, you’ll never find the same page again. Wonderful idea, no?"
I wonder why Mezzaqui has chosen the poplar as her inspiration. The poplar is often overlooked in terms of its aesthetic qualities and rather considered to be of some value because of its use in paper manufacturing. She calms my curiosity: “It was a fallen tree across from my house in the countryside. I took a photo of it and then decided to work on it. I have recently discovered that the poplar, like all plants, has a particular symbolism. It is a tree of borders, of the boundaries even between worlds, on this side [the living] and the beyond. It is linked to the myth of Persephone. It is a plant with certain properties. It dates back to ancient cultures that used to read the world through certain symbolisms; of which we have a little understanding of in today’s world. The poplar is also a plant of protection. For example in Bach flower remedies, one of the 38 substances is aspen which is extracted from poplar seeds. It is believed to protect one against all unfounded fears. But I learnt all this much later. I initially made this work on the poplar tree, which in turn caused me to turn my attention to the plant.”
Mezzaqui’s poplars are ghost-like, they seem to have died long ago. In wanting to revive them, some gentle soul has attached a single green leaf from their living kin to one of its "charred" branches. In some of these collage works, the leaves are positioned inside the bottom of the frame, as if they’d just fallen off their branches. In this tranquil representation of symbiotic separation and unity, new and old, submission to mother nature’s ways are poised against the thunderous perseverance of artistic sensibility against all odds.
I ask if the frames are also made of poplar wood, but Mezzaqui informs me she thinks they are not. It is a puzzling human condition to be so attracted to something that was once strong but has become fragile through living as in the case of Mezzaqui’s fallen poplar tree. By hands a tree is planted and it grows by that care of hand; then it is/was cut by hand; stripped of its bark, its naked trunk is then turned into pulp by processes and machinery designed by hands; and then the pulp is turned into paper, and paper is used by human hands to make art or books, newspapers or posters. And in this case, as Mezzaqui puts it to me, “With poplar, paper is made, with paper we remake poplar.” Things must always come full circle for Mezzaqui, the way it has always been including in previous works such as Eternità (2011). Her art has to be infused with fairy tales. For only then does it belong to her.
As you look from the upper balcony down to the house – where once stood seats for cinema-goers - you can see an installation of five books bound in red fabric suspended from the ceiling (5 Books, 2024) and three swings made of wood and rope featuring little brass bells (3 Swings – None, Nothing, Little, 2024) with the underside of each inscribed with the words, none, nothing and little. On the stage stands Plotinus’s Table (2017-2024) with thousands of cut-out Greek words from The Six Enneads (the accumulated result of a series of group workshops organised by Mezzaqui at the gallery premises in San Gimignano and in Maccastorna – an Italian town in Lombardy with just 66 inhabitants) and on the screen, a projection of black and white images taken by Paolo Carraro during the workshops which Mezzaqui has befittingly given its own title, Collecting Words/The Table of Poetry. Hands that cut paper, hands that roll, sketch, perforate, thread, mark, underline, write, trace, copy, shade, erase, tear on loop. This installation is completed by nine threads made of paper and beads hanging from the ceiling. All of it depicting an affinity with Buddhist and Tibetan spiritual influences.
What does all this mean? Is it about our lost childhoods? Is it about losing our lives to the chaos of contemporary life? Or, that we will never have the same juvenile joy if we indeed dare to ride one of those swings? Can hands that make great things also destroy? Should The Six Enneads by Plotinus be turned into shreds of paper and placed into a “glass coffin” like sleeping beauty? This philosophical masterpiece that influenced Western and Near-Eastern thought for millennia and which deals with ethical topics, cosmological subjects and physical reality, the soul, knowledge and intelligible reality, the being and what resides above it, the One or the first principle of all meticulously cut to shreds word by word. In art, the destruction of one thing often leads to the creation of another. In this sense, Mezzaqui is reviving the long-abandoned writings of Plotinus. I am sure many of the visitors lifted their eyebrows upon hearing the name, Plotinus. “Who is he? How come he gets a table in San Gimignano on a Saturday evening, and I don’t!” All kidding aside, it’s a grand artistic statement alluding to the continued erasure and ruin of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) - based on the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world - and values related to that eminent idea. For those who may need further visual encouragement to delve into the depths of this subject, I can recommend Max Richter's All Human Beings.
Poetry is there within arm’s reach, floating mid-air if you stop to read it, but will you? Of my numerous inspections of 5 Books, I can say that visitors were more drawn to engaging with 3 Swings rather than reaching out and pulling one of the books to take a look inside. And what of the poetry they’ve been burdened with? Mezzaqui has called five tremendous titles by Mariangela Gualtieri to her aid to transmit her own messages on the zeitgeist and the human condition: (Senza polvere senza peso, 2006, Einaudi [Without dust without weight], Bestia di gioia, 2010, Einaudi [Beast of Joy], Le giovani parole, 2015, Einaudi [The Inexperienced Words], Quando non morivo, 2019, Einaudi [When I Didn’t Die], Ruvido umano, 2024, Einaudi [Rough Humanity). Each of them with red bookmark ribbons as well as decorations to help you find her most crucial selected reading, contrary to the idea behind The Book of Sand. A long period of research, thought, sensibility has brought all this to fruition for the artist who has recently turned 60 and has over thirty years of artistic endeavour under her belt. I wonder, how many visitors are really able to take to heart the depth of all this painstaking work… Then again, I doubt that Mezzaqui produces for her visitors. She likes working with the book format, this is not her first time [for another example, click here also] and with poetry, that of Mariangela Gualtieri but also texts by other writers and thinkers such as Homer, Virginia Woolf and Dostoevsky. Mezzaqui also writes. It is through reading and writing that she makes sense of her own being.
Although an artist of international recognition, that has never been her reason for pursuing art. With this in mind, I pull a book towards myself and turn its pages. As I observe Mezzaqui’s romantic, melancholic decorations I seize the moment when no one’s looking, I stick my nose right into the binding stitches. I have had a severe case of bibliosmia ever since I was a little girl. Each book has its own smell, and that defining smell is caused by the chemical decomposition of the compounds inside the paper. In other words, what we smell is how the book is slowly dying. Whether written by long-dead authors or living poets, books are living beings. To come full circle once again, like Mezzaqui’s poplars encased in wooden frames.
During our hour alone, I tell the artist that I feel there’s a deep connection between her works and Sappho’s lyrical poetry. One the translated fragments of Sappho’s by Gregory Nagy reads: "I love the sensual. For me this and the love for the sun has a share in brilliance and beauty” and this rings true for me every time I stumble on art that makes me concur. So I pose this to Mezzaqui, “When you are working on your art perhaps you are working intimately with one idea, and then you install it into the gallery space. Once it's all set up for the visitors, do you see it again and think, ‘If I were to do it again, I'd do it differently’? Mezzaqui takes a deep breath and tells me, “A little, yes. So, there is a line in Pier Paolo Pasolini’s film, The Decameron [1971]. He’s acting as a painter and has a white wall that he has to fresco, and he wonders, 'Why create a work of art, when dreaming about it so much sweeter?' And for me that is a beautiful question. That is, we could have many works in our heads, perhaps brilliant ones. And the answer is because through the process of realization amazing things happen. And so you are already in a phase of transformation that you don't know where it will take you, so you have an idea, down there a sentence, a poem, you start off with a work. These days everybody is coming up to me and asking, ‘Ah, are you happy?’ I respond, ‘I don't know.’ I am not saying this out of modesty. I need some time to pass before I can go back in there and look at my exhibition the way I look at Macchi's. When I saw Macchi's exhibition, I understood a great deal in a split second. I didn't need him to explain his work to me, because I could see clearly what he had made. Simply because I am distanced from his work. I don’t have the same distance between myself and my work.”
It’s exactly this sense of accountability and self-doubt that makes Mezzaqui an old-school artist. Art is magic in her hands, but that also makes her its custodian, she’s responsible for it. In the wrong hands, white magic can quickly turn tar black. I happen to ask her if there are any works she’d forgotten about throughout her artistic practice spanning three decades. She tells me, “There are jobs that I delete because they are wrong. Between us, I couldn't have understood that I made mistakes if I hadn't made them in the first place. But of those pieces, I have no recollection, I don't have any more photos, I don't put them on my website, they aren't there, they disappear.” Credible to the core, she is her own harshest critic. If only all her contemporaries were that brave there wouldn't only be less art in galleries but also fewer galleries in operation. But then, I ask myself what her former students who hold her in the highest esteem would make of their own lives? Which reminds me of that sunny afternoon, as we walked through the medieval cobbled streets of San Gimignano. I was moved to tears of joy to witness the influence she unknowingly has over her former students – who are there to support her and join in the series of workshops she has organised at the gallery – and as we strode along I vaguely remember asking her, “Do you like teaching?” She grunted jokingly and told me, “It’s probably the hardest thing to do!” A free spirit who has been comfortable with working across different mediums and with different religious beliefs including the three major ones - Christianity, Islam, and Judaism - she exudes modesty and confidence all at once. With every step she takes, I witness how she claims her space with the grace of a sage.
Returning to the curatorial aspects of Collecting Words, this vast theatre space might seem empty and under-utilised for this exhibition, but when you exhibit such big ideas you need a large space, so they can breathe and can come into their own. In fact, one of the basic teachings of aesthetics is that to stand out and make an impression upon the viewer, a work of art requires a sizable space. Having said that, it is always good practice to give space to space. In this sense, Collecting Words represents exemplary curatorship without “a curator.” Especially the backstage room, where Mezzaqui’s series of pencil on paper drawings of mandalas worked to perfection and then partially erased that takes its title “There’s a tacit understanding between my pencils and the trees outside”, from a line in Nina Cassian’s poem “Intimacy” (although the poem may read like it’s about solitude it’s really about being comfortable in your own skin). And of course, you can see fragments of rubber and lead at the bottom of the frame, the remnants of erasure. Artistic poetry down to the bones.
Intimacy
I can be alone,I know how to be alone.
There's a tacit understanding between my pencilsand the trees outside.Between the rain and my luminous hair.
The tea is boilingMy golden zoneMy pure burning amber.
I can be alone,I know how to be alone, by tea-lightI write.
Nina Cassian (1924-2014)
All of Mezzaqui’s artistic practices are antithesis to what contemporary life encourages us to buy into: faster is better, bigger is better, more is better, do less but make more. Instead Sabrina Mezzaqui pleads us to go slow, to have little, to stop, to look and ponder.
Within the context of two of the three ongoing exhibitions at Galleria Continua San Gimignano, False Autumn, and Collecting Words, I can state that the works of Macchi and Mezzaqui play intimately as if they are one unique body. So I ask Mezzaqui, “Did you know how well your works would go together before they were installed in the gallery space? She tells me, “No, we hadn’t spoken before. I love his works.” I feel entitled to let her in on a secret, “And Macchi loves your works.”
Her eyes gleam as she continues, “We met many years ago in Buenos Aires. And today, at lunch, we talked a bit more. The interesting thing is there are formal affinities between our works, that is, if you remove the texts, things seem very similar. However, in reality, behind it all, we use different imageries. This is also partly due to the work becoming complete through a process of reading. We say the works are playing together because they are communicating with one another. This is the magic, the greatest thing. Synchronicity! It may be that Maurizio [Rigillo], who also extended the invitation to Jorge Macchi, perhaps foresaw how well my works and his works would go together. When the invitation to participate in the exhibition arrived and I saw that there was his puzzle work [False Autumn, 2024] I had already made the poplar tree silkscreen prints with real leaves. I said to myself, damn!”
I respond that two artists from far corners of the world, speaking different languages and living in different cultures are talking through a shared artistic language. A rarity. Sabrina adds with a big smile, “We have Maurizio to thank for bringing us together!”
So, if you happen to be in Tuscany, go to San Gimignano and see Sabrina Mezzaqui’s magical, intuitive, and inspirational solo show. And perhaps, after you have seen Plotinus’s Table, you can get yourself a table at Piazza della Cisterna and finally realise that all the world's a stage whether you do or don’t understand art. At the very least, you can allow yourself the luxury and pleasure of feeling "something real" in this artificial, plastic world.
With special thanks to Galleria Contina San Gimignano.
Collecting Words will be on display until 26 January 2025 at Galleria Continua San Gimignano.
For more information on Sabrina Mezzaqui and her works visit: www.sabrinamezzaqui.it
The artist conversation referred to in this review was transcribed from a recording in Italian and translated by Hande Eagle. All rights reserved 2024.