Mostra evento della giovane fotografa catanese Stefania Falsone

Casa Toesca opens its doors to Stefania Falsone and her photographic work produced during the period of artist residency. Stefania is a finalist of the IV edition of Art Prize CBM and this project is part of a speech that starts from the theme chosen for the last edition of the Prize: Forms and subjects of waiting. What Marco Petrocchi has called “the spectacle of oblivion” stages the state of abandonment, or of partial abandonment, in which some places of the show located in two towns in the Canavese area: the Patronal theater and the S.S. theater. Annunziata di Rivarolo C.se, the Perona cinema and the Municipal theater of Cuorgnè. Stefania’s eye makes its way between what remains, walking slowly and preserving the balance that has taken hold of these buildings now abandoned from their original function. The artist tries to translate the stories that are told to her from the worn armchairs, from the walls without plaster, from the fragments of the posters into photography. The time that flows relentlessly on these spaces is imaginary and concrete at the same time: it is the illusion of a reality denied by reality itself. Time is impotence. The walls and the piled objects are the only impassive witnesses of a wearing show. Yet, if you pay attention, the buzz of life that animated them still echoes in the deafening silence.
The intent is to capture “the silent delicacy” with which life, protected by the envelope of the walls, continues to pulsate. “Waiting is an imposition. Yet it is the only thing that makes us physically perceive the wear and tear of time and makes us know its promises “, wrote Andrea Köhler in his essay The Art of Waiting. This is what happens in these unarmed places, waiting for something to happen. The exhibition is the moment of verification of the work done during the meeting between Stefania’s creative personality and the Canavese area. The project once again represents a moment of experimentation, aimed at stimulating a reflection on the image-memory-meaning relationship, bringing the artist into a completely foreign reality. Starting from the aesthetic path undertaken by Stefania during the award, it was decided to recover on one hand the stylistic code of the work in competition (i.e. the presence of a female figure who dialogues with the surrounding environment), on the other the reflection on the time. This time, however, the young photographer had to deal with a dimension of time and expectation far from what had been the room she had set up to serve the theme to be developed. Vice versa, the current project forced it to measure itself with places that have a collective experience behind it, which still resists in the various forms of abandonment. The challenge was to be able to overcome these two rocks: the environment totally alien to her, and the confrontation with spaces that have belonged to the community for decades. An unprecedented approach, useful to improve the baggage of a career still to be formed. The artist’s residence therefore reconfirms the goal and the will to induce experiential growth that can mutually enrich the guest artist and the territory.

Maria Riccardi