MATtam 74
Manto Arte Temporanea | Temporary Art Manto
short exhibitions in found spaces
Sala Ex Sissa | Palazzo Te | Mantua
Oriella Savoldi
Wherever the gaze rests
Sunday November 24th 2024
only between 10:30 AM and 12:30 PM
Wherever the gaze rests, images are presented, as if at an unpostponable appointment, vivisected into shapes, lines, colours, empty and full spaces. Welcoming them, translating them onto white paper, letting the water play its game in the encounter with the pigments, is openness, is passion for what happens, for life and its surroundings. There, the watercolors proposed by the painter, floral works, architecture or landscapes are born, sometimes accompanied by poems inspired by them or viceversa, born following them on the wave of emotion generated by the gaze. The dove that accompanies each watercolor is taken from a canvas by Heba Zagout, a Palestinian artist born in Gaza in the Al Burejj refugee camp, in 1984, and tragically left under the rubble of her home, with her entire family, on 10/13 2023, during the Israeli bombings. Heba used and taught art to girls and boys to cope with the extremely hard life in Gaza prison and to offer them images of peace and beauty.
Oriella Savoldi discovered watercolor in second grade thanks to a teacher who, ahead of her time, wanted a non-authoritarian school for her students, tailored to the girls who animated her class. Since then she has never stopped frequenting it, a regenerative refuge to overcome the heaviness that life often reserves. For her, the watercolor is gratitude towards that teacher and towards others who she met along her research path. She has participated in numerous personal and collective exhibitions. She loves to accompany his watercolors with poems. Watercolour, like poetry, is an encounter with the deepest part of oneself; it is a passion that has allowed her, in the wake of feminism, to reconnect with others and allows her to take an active part in the interweaving of that social fabric generative of peaceful and civil coexistence; an intertwining experienced among the workers of the factories frequented in many years of union work. Her wealth includes numerous articles and texts published on various topics related to the work experience of women and men. Last but not least the publication of Terrestrial Costellations (GAM Editrice), an autobiographical book that collects stories and some poems, and images of his watercolors. She lives and works between Ghedi and Brescia.
"Reading the traces of color in their most intimate relationships seems to be the perfect opportunity to achieve the free pleasure of the gaze." Donata Negrini
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