11/12/2021 - 05/02/2022
Marta Roberti - In metamorfosi | curated by Cecilia Canziani
z2o Sara Zanin is pleased to present, on Saturday 11 December, the first solo exhibition at the gallery by Marta Roberti (Brescia, 1977), In metamorfosi, curated by Cecilia Canziani.
The exhibition brings together two series of works by the artist created in the last year and other recent works which, as frequently happens in Marta Roberti's research, have been reconfigured for this exhibition.
The central core of the exhibition revolves around a series of drawings entitled S’io mi intuassi come tu tinmii.
Made on Yunnan paper to be subsequently embroidered on fabric with the traditional chain stitch typical of Kashmir and currently being worked in India under the supervision of Paola Manfredi, an expert in Indian weaving, they are the subject of a commission from the Italian Institute of Culture of New Delhi culture. The tapestries will be exhibited in an exhibition at the IIC in New Delhi in February next year. “The title is a verse taken from Dante's Comedy (Paradiso IX, 81) which could be translated as: if I could penetrate you, understand you, perceive you with the same empathy that makes you penetrate me. This wonderful phrase seemed to me to poetically express the idea of metamorphosis that is at the centre of all the works ", says the artist. The animals that populate the three Cantiche of the Divine Comedy are the starting point for a female reworking of mythological and zoomorphic creatures, whose iconography is rethought by the artist starting from herself, composing a gallery of changing self-portraits.
The idea of interspecific metamorphosis and interaction between human and animal also characterizes Lotus goddesses, the second group of works created for the exhibition: reinventions of female Indian gods, terrible and powerful figures, Durga and Sheetala can bring destruction or administer care. They cause chaos, but also its recomposition. On display they are flanked by figures of animals which are themselves symbolic, ambiguous, and metamorphic.
The principle that governs these two cycles is the same that governs the work of Marta Roberti in general and has its roots in multiplicity, in the trust in transformation, multiplication and growth. Her drawings obtained or coloured using copy paper, which is the matrix or body of the work, and which always generates a drawing and its double, can be assembled and reassembled, opening up to a possibility of combinations and interpolations between different cycles. The limit of the image is never defined once and for all: it is the image itself that decides the extent of the support and not vice versa. Thus, in this exhibition this new body of works recalls different works from different series, such as the flowers painted without looking by Blind Herbarium, new grafts of bird and flower figures, lotus plant recompositions, and carbon copy paper engravings of forests and woods: restless images because they can be recombined ad libitum.
Short bio
Marta Roberti (Brescia, 1977) lives and works in Rome. After graduating in Philosophy in Verona, she graduated in Multimedia art at the Academy of Fine Arts in Brera. Drawing is her main medium and she declines it in installations and animated videos through which he explores the relationship between East and West, studying and reworking the myths and their representation. His artistic production has always found inspiration in the idea that the ego has no boundaries and that it is not only human.
In 2020 she won the Cantica Award, and her work Bestiary of the Other World became part of the collection of the National Institute of Graphic Arts. She participated in international exhibitions and festivals including Encounter of Imagination. Dialogue between The Divine Comedy and Classic of Mountains and Seas, Pearl art Museum, Shanghai; I say I, Galleria Nazionale di Arte Moderna Roma (2021); Ladder to the moon, Galleria Monitor Roma (2021), Visions in the Making, Italian Institute of Culture of New Delhi, 2020); Wall Eyes, Johannesburg, Capetown (2019) and Auditorium Parco della Musica di Roma (2020); Something Else, Biennal Off Cairo (2019), Portrait Portrait, Taipei Contemporary Art Center (2017), Scarabocchio, Kuandu Museum of Art Taipei. She lived in Asia for a few years, where she participated in residencies in China, Taiwan and Vietnam. Through workshops on the technique of Blind Drawing he shows how learning to draw is about learning to see.
Info:
Marta Roberti
In metamorfosi
curated by Cecilia Canziani
11 December 2021 > 5 February 2022
z2o Sara Zanin | via della Vetrina 21 - Rome
Gallery opening hours: Mon-Fri (Sat by appointment only)| 1-7 pm
Info: info@z2ogalleria.it | z2ogalleria.it