CECCHINATO, Elena.
Original drawing (80 x 50 cm), china ink drawing/writing on artist's paper, heightened with 24k gold leaf. This drawing just came out of me spontaneously, without thinking much, so any kind of meaning I am attributing to it now, it is a posteriori meaning. At the time I was thinking a lot about divergent sides within unity, plurality and oneness, and above all freedom and Immortality, like an eternal suspension of some sort, like no rules, like a question never answered, a secret, forever free.
CECCHINATO, Elena.
Original collage of internal lining of envelope, silver leaf, Svaroski, pen and pencil on paper. 25 x 20 cm, (46 x 40 cm framed). These interiors of envelopes collages are the last 3 remaining from a series of 9 Madonnas I had made while my son was just born, dedicated to motherhood, spirituality and creation at large. "The Series was part of a project curated by Mebrak Tareke in NY City called ''Own Cult -Icons from Wonderland', which explored the role of icons and cult figures in creating a new visual language on human identity. The digital age, its endless flow of information, makes it difficult for us to peel fact from fiction and the past from the future. However, it does nurture our ability to tap into the subconscious, where a plethora of non-linear narratives exist. This has the potential to shape how we experience the world. Ultimately, this show reiterates what artist Elena Cecchinato calls 'Own Cult'. It eschews distinction, time and place, illustrating instead, how our lives are hybridised and governed by us. Our existence is constantly fraught with collision, chaos and change. Therein lies the beauty of Africana and its place in culture and society today: its cults and icons are an embodiment of the agile human spirit. Those tell their own heroic fairytales of hope amidst adversities" (MT).
CECCHINATO, Elena.
Original collage of internal lining of envelope, pencil, ink, paint, lacquer wax, lustre on paper. 25 x 20 cm, (46 x 40 cm framed). These interiors of envelopes collages are the last 3 remaining from a series of 9 Madonnas I had made while my son was just born, dedicated to motherhood, spirituality and creation at large. "The Series was part of a project curated by Mebrak Tareke in NY City called ''Own Cult -Icons from Wonderland', which explored the role of icons and cult figures in creating a new visual language on human identity. The digital age, its endless flow of information, makes it difficult for us to peel fact from fiction and the past from the future. However, it does nurture our ability to tap into the subconscious, where a plethora of non-linear narratives exist. This has the potential to shape how we experience the world. Ultimately, this show reiterates what artist Elena Cecchinato calls 'Own Cult'. It eschews distinction, time and place, illustrating instead, how our lives are hybridised and governed by us. Our existence is constantly fraught with collision, chaos and change. Therein lies the beauty of Africana and its place in culture and society today: its cults and icons are an embodiment of the agile human spirit. Those tell their own heroic fairytales of hope amidst adversities" (MT).
CECCHINATO, Elena.
Hand-decorated inglazed fine bone tea pot and 6x cups, unique. From the Museum Spirituality Collection. Museum Spirituality is an on-going collection I have been developing of unique, hand decorated vessels and plates in fine bone china. Provocative, ceramic pieces bringing meaningful transnational conversations onto our daily cultural practices. Plates and vessels are a place of exchange. In this case the exchange is between different cultures and faiths on common human occurrences. They are made up of museum pieces from all over the world arranged as trans-personal, archetypal images in fluid conversation with one another. A series of texts as words, and drawings have been superimposed onto these plates, asserting an altered space and reality. In the collection of plates, a Chinese Buddha converses with an Italian Madonna about love and parenthood, a Malian Bamana Ci-wara debates gender relations with a North Korean female military officer. An American Indian Hopi mask discusses war and carnality with an Assyrian defaced bronze head of a King and a French bronze angel. I like to think of these plates and vessels as a sort of zero degree transition area where the participants are called to experience, read and interpret the gaps in space and time which characterise the negotiation of cultural values and histor(y)ies.
Limited editioned screen print (4/12) heightened in gold leaf and gold lustre, 100 x 70 cm (114 x 84 cm framed). Switch Supposing is both a writing and a drawing exercise in the form of a cosmographical design. Finely psycho-poetical invocations meander and converge in a sketch-like fashion of prayer for life's everyday traumas. Looking closely at the image of Switch Supposing, it is made up of text in the form of small syncretic poems like "sense, flow, make, things, whole" or the more simple "parent's lips". I created the poems first in automatic freedom before rearranging them into a new macro/micro design: an immortal higher view of the still now and the forever evolving uncertainty of every present moment. The drawing of Switch Supposing has taken many forms and declinations, each time interacting with its living environment -from its first time as a ceramic tile-floor installation in Peckham Area10, to a pulsating light box in the Scuderie of Palazzo Moroni, Padova, It was shown at numerous bus stops across London and in Art Underground, billboard posters occupy Regent's Park tube station, curated by Artbelow in conjunction with one of the world's most prestigious art fairs -Frieze London. It also became a Workshop 'Languages as Images' at the Warwick festival of Literature and Spoken Words.
Original collage of internal lining of envelope, silver leaf, Svaroski, pen and pencil on paper. 25 x 20 cm, (46 x 40 cm framed). These interiors of envelopes collages are the last 3 remaining from a series of 9 Madonnas I had made while my son was just born, dedicated to motherhood, spirituality and creation at large. "The Series was part of a project curated by Mebrak Tareke in NY City called ''Own Cult -Icons from Wonderland', which explored the role of icons and cult figures in creating a new visual language on human identity. The digital age, its endless flow of information, makes it difficult for us to peel fact from fiction and the past from the future. However, it does nurture our ability to tap into the subconscious, where a plethora of non-linear narratives exist. This has the potential to shape how we experience the world. Ultimately, this show reiterates what artist Elena Cecchinato calls 'Own Cult'. It eschews distinction, time and place, illustrating instead, how our lives are hybridised and governed by us. Our existence is constantly fraught with collision, chaos and change. Therein lies the beauty of Africana and its place in culture and society today: its cults and icons are an embodiment of the agile human spirit. Those tell their own heroic fairytales of hope amidst adversities" (MT).
Limited-edition giclee print (1/3), 100 x 77 cm (framed). This drawing became a light box and a tile carpet climbing up and descending stairs, installed at Palazzo Moroni, for "Transpadovano, Hold, Close/Miles" , a solo show in my home county of Padua, Italy (2011). Themes explored: Homeland, Hometown, evolution, migration, survival, love, renovation, perpetual creation.