Virginia Zanetti
Italy + Switzerland + India
Virginia Zanetti
Abysses Tapestry, 2019
Ultramarine linen-embroidered tapestry with gold thread
9'10'' x 9'10”
The Abysses project was made in collaboration with Astalli Center, a reception center for refugees, and was curated by Spazio Y and Border Crossing for Manifesta 12 in Palermo in 2018. A collective action that involved the community of migrants hosted in various reception centers, several students of the Fine Arts Academy, and some citizens. The project, investigating the concept of abyss and immense depth as a metaphor of the impenetrability of human destiny, wants to lead us to a reflection on the dramatic issue of migrants through a creative choral process: Stars were embroidered with gold thread on a single piece of ultramarine blue fabric. This color symbolizes the sea, the ecosystem from which living beings originate, a trajectory often used by individuals to move from one place to another on our planet.
In the course of the performative action, the artist invited each participant to embroider a star with a precious golden thread, whose shape recalls the one painted by Giotto in the heavenly vault of the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua (Italy) at the beginning of the 14th century. Embroidery is an opportunity to share and collect memories related to the sea, a practice that becomes a projection of desires and memories to compose constellations made of today’s dreams. Considering the etymology of the word “desire,” from the Latin de (negative meaning) plus sidus (star), “desire” literally means “lack of stars,” good omens, by extension a feeling of lack and consequently a passionate research. This work, therefore, wants to transform the fear of the unknown into a creative act of individual and collective hope. At the end of the performance, the fabric becomes the subject of a symbolic action: raised toward the sky, the blue of the abyss becomes the sky itself, supported by the same people who have imagined it. A sky full of new meanings in a delicate balance between space and time. This final collective artwork was raised by Virginia and all the participants in several squares, becoming a starry sky supported by human columns. After almost one year, Abysses involved residents and migrants living in Zurich in the same action for Choreographing the Public in collaboration with Italian Culture Institute, Migration Museum, OnCurating Space in Zurich, and Traffic Gallery.
In the course of the performative action, the artist invited each participant to embroider a star with a precious golden thread, whose shape recalls the one painted by Giotto in the heavenly vault of the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua (Italy) at the beginning of the 14th century. Embroidery is an opportunity to share and collect memories related to the sea, a practice that becomes a projection of desires and memories to compose constellations made of today’s dreams. Considering the etymology of the word “desire,” from the Latin de (negative meaning) plus sidus (star), “desire” literally means “lack of stars,” good omens, by extension a feeling of lack and consequently a passionate research. This work, therefore, wants to transform the fear of the unknown into a creative act of individual and collective hope. At the end of the performance, the fabric becomes the subject of a symbolic action: raised toward the sky, the blue of the abyss becomes the sky itself, supported by the same people who have imagined it. A sky full of new meanings in a delicate balance between space and time. This final collective artwork was raised by Virginia and all the participants in several squares, becoming a starry sky supported by human columns. After almost one year, Abysses involved residents and migrants living in Zurich in the same action for Choreographing the Public in collaboration with Italian Culture Institute, Migration Museum, OnCurating Space in Zurich, and Traffic Gallery.
Virginia Zanetti
The Pillars of the Earth, 2015
Archival pigment prints
Virginia’s works have a function of transformation, reversal of states, and conditions. In her research, the Other, as opposed to the Self, constitutes the starting point to explore ideas of separation and disharmony with the purpose to allow the recognition of our link with the community and the environment. Actions and performances are a fundamental part of her practice, both as an aesthetic experience and a generating force of pictorial, photographic, sculptural, or environmental works. They are constructed as rituals or psychomagic acts in order to rediscover a new social conscience. With her practice, she tries to find the essence of a community and the human’s “essential,” adopting the critical potential of crisis as a stimulus for a continuous rethinking of reality. Among the motivations behind the processes of the genesis of Virginia’s works, there is the desire to understand the functioning of life and the relationships that support it, starting from an idea of non-duality between the phenomena and the force that sustains them. Her practice is based on collective participatory actions as a tool, which tries to capture some visions by the collective unconscious, taking advantage of revealing coincidences, random circumstances manifesting some deep messages. In her works, she tries to cancel any constraint linked to the categories; material and immaterial forms merge when the performative act becomes an object and the viewer becomes an artist through a collective mode of development. Every action seeks to bring out a renewed sense of the existence and an affective knowledge. Virginia tries to identify and break up the boundary between the artwork and the spectator through relational dynamics or within the shared codes of a community, aiming at making the artwork an integral part of the environment where it is conceived.
about the artist
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Virginia Zanetti is an artist and art professor living in Prato, Italy. She holds a degree in Painting with honors at the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence, specializing in art education. She works both in unconventional places, and Italian and foreign institutions for culture and contemporary art, such as the Man of Nuoro, Palazzo Strozzi in Florence, the CAC Pecci in Prato, the Kunsthalle of Bern, the Italian Cultural Institute of New Delhi and Zurich. She has won prizes, such as the MIBACT Movin Up 2015 Award and the International Competition for artists for the creation of permanent artworks for the Law Court in Florence in 2017, the Maccaferri First Prize for photography, Artefiera 2019, Smartup Optima 2019, and Level 0 ArtVerona Digital Yellow 2020. Her works and texts are present in publications such as A Cielo Aperto and H. U. Obrist’s book A Brief History of Curating, postmediabooks, Milan; in magazines such as Artribune, Espo arte, Exhibart, Flash Art or newspapers such as La Lettura of Corriere della Sera or Republic.
virginia-zanetti.com
interview
Virginia Zanetti is an artist and art professor living in Prato, Italy. She holds a degree in Painting with honors at the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence, specializing in art education. She works both in unconventional places, and Italian and foreign institutions for culture and contemporary art, such as the Man of Nuoro, Palazzo Strozzi in Florence, the CAC Pecci in Prato, the Kunsthalle of Bern, the Italian Cultural Institute of New Delhi and Zurich. She has won prizes, such as the MIBACT Movin Up 2015 Award and the International Competition for artists for the creation of permanent artworks for the Law Court in Florence in 2017, the Maccaferri First Prize for photography, Artefiera 2019, Smartup Optima 2019, and Level 0 ArtVerona Digital Yellow 2020. Her works and texts are present in publications such as A Cielo Aperto and H. U. Obrist’s book A Brief History of Curating, postmediabooks, Milan; in magazines such as Artribune, Espo arte, Exhibart, Flash Art or newspapers such as La Lettura of Corriere della Sera or Republic.
virginia-zanetti.com
interview