Don Don

Letizia Cariello’s first solo show at the gallery is presented in three stages that open with Travel Stick, with which the artist appears symbolically to accompany visitors through her work, drawing inspiration from the portable installations that pilgrims used to take with them along the Via Francigena, or the Way of St. James in Compostela. Flanking the way is a polyptych that instantly announces composed figures that are not re-composable according to customary patterns: in the inner world things are words that are tinged with memory, and memory is sleep, not dreams.

The objects are aligned like words in a three-dimensional sentence, where the profound part perceives presence through the filter of the eye that observes and recognizes: stone, but not only that; feather, but not only. Organ door, but also painting, and so on.

Two small photographs, White bed and Red bed, accompany you to the central room, where the scene of sleep is materially dismantled, engaging the onlooker’s body in a series of reactions due to recognition.

A bed is: headboard, mattress, bedspread, silent time. We find headboards flying on the wall and hanging on shiny steel knives, a mattress on the ground with red-rope hair growing out of it, a body depicted on a bedspread-tapestry arranged vertically, while a numberless clock sings the days of the week with the voices of 63 little girls from around the world.

Last comes an island of blocks with feathers, leaves, spoons, ropes and items of clothing laid out on them. All around, miscellaneous objects and photographs attempt to represent themselves and the self.  They say what they do but they refer to another horizon.

The artist’s creations “normally come about as the result of an occasional distraction or surprise at common objects that arouse the desire to play with them and transform them. Letizia takes pleasure in picking things up, taking them to pieces and putting them back together again. She puts items close to each other and alters their positions. She glues or sews them, ties them together or hangs them up, all in a fraction of a second, first at sight then by hand. Rather like what happens with thoughts, fantasies and dreams.” (from Sul lavoro di Letizia Cariello by Silvano Fausti, Milan, 2010).

Don…don…e mi dicono, Dormi!
Mi cantano, Dormi! Sussurrano,
Dormi! Bisbigliano, Dormi!
là voci di tenebra azzurra…
Mi sembrano canti di culla,
che fanno ch’io torni com’era…
sentivo mia madre… poi nulla…
sul far della sera.

(Giovanni Pascoli, La mia sera)