PARATISSIMA TALENT PRIZE – 2019
PRHOOM
The Colorful Textile Architectures in the Abandoned Places of Eleonora Gugliotta
The environments reinvented and photographed by Eleonora Gugliotta are spaces of transition, collective memory, reflection, and accumulation. They are also places where space and objects become unusable and inaccessible. In these spaces, human presence is now perceived only indirectly, through the traces of use left by past human interactions in a space now abandoned.
Always starting with the appropriation of an abandoned place, where the architecture retains the signs of past human presence, the artist reworks the space by reinventing it. Eleonora’s textile architectures are inserted within the space, transforming its initial layout to the point of sometimes making it even inaccessible. A layering of multicolored threads is interwoven between diagonals and straight lines, together forming a structure within the structure.
Now, it is not only everyday objects that lose their original use, but also the environments in which they coexist lose their primary function of welcoming and hosting human presence, often becoming inaccessible. Eleonora’s textile practice is not merely an aesthetic one, but opens up a reflection on the identity of a space originally conceived for human interaction at the moment it is abandoned.
The intersection of straight lines creates an interesting interplay of geometric structures that expand into space, integrating perfectly. This colored stratification that weaves into the building’s architectural structure immerses the space in a dreamlike, imaginative state. The colors of the fabric threads create new volumes, delineating new territories and dividing existing ones in a play between empty and full spaces—environments that can be traversed and others that emerge from an intimate immersion between the place and the artist.
The wool threads that intersect in the space also represent the trace of the artist’s passage, as she connects with the space and gathers the memories it holds, communicating with it.
Eleonora spends entire days inside these places, frozen in another time, thus establishing a very close relationship between herself and the space. By reclaiming these disused sites, she physically traces her passage, giving these places a new identity or reinforcing their pre-existing one.
Sasvati Santamaria
Ambienti #8 – Borgo di Rajù was created in a village in the Sicilian hinterland, completely abandoned due to a river flood. The threads intertwine, scrutinizing every corner of that still place, which, however, holds a powerful memory of what it once was.
Ambienti #10 – Charcot (Environments #10 – Charcot), pavilion of the former Psychiatric Hospital of Volterra: In this work, Gugliotta creates such a dense weave within a corridor that connects various rooms of the psychiatric hospital, transforming the space originally designed for passage into a full one, where one must stop to observe, and where passage becomes impossible.
Stampa fine art - 40 x 60 cm