Elisabetta Cameli – LA NASCITA DI MILLE INFERNI

Opening Friday, September 15 at 5:30 p.m. at the Rocca di Dozza (BO) La nascita di mille inferni, the solo exhibition of textile artist Elisabetta Cameli curated by Lucrezia Caliani. The exhibition is part of the official calendar of events of the Biennale del Muro Dipinto 2023 and will be open until October 15, 2023.
” La Nascita di Mille Inferni” is Elisabetta Cameli’s anthological exhibition that brings together some of the most important works from the artist’s production and others created ad hoc, inspired by the place that will host the exhibition: the prisons of the Rocca di Dozza fortress. The exhibition is in fact the outcome of a profound reflection on birth, as a primal act of separation and the source of eternal conflicts, a theme from which the artist’s research unravels and focuses.

What is the line between being born and missing? How many acts of death and rebirth do we have to perform in the span of our existence to truly live? And what does it mean to come into the light, if not to cause something to remain in the shadows? These questions are the starting point for the artist’s reflection, which has been further stimulated on this occasion by the very place that will host the exhibition: the prisons of the Rocca di Dozza, an extremely evocative and evocative place that still perfectly preserves the engravings on the walls of the inmates who were locked up there over the years. Descending into this environment, one has the sensation of entering a chthonic, infernal and at the same time intimate and enclosed territory, on the border between the cavernicolous and uterine dimensions. This space has led Elisabetta Cameli back to the feeling of “Regressus ad Uterum,” or a mystical return to the primordial state of being, and it has inspired her to create her latest sculpture, a work that reflects on the principle of dichotomy included in that of birth. The artist, going to work on the idea of hollow space as a space simultaneously empty and full, has in fact created a work that points us to the duplicity of inside and outside, becoming an allegory of the mother’s womb. The sculpture consists of two parts, hollow indeed, the inside of which can be glimpsed thanks to the transparency of the lace. In it, the artist, through the use of coiled ropes, recalls living and becoming parts of the body, which also become the unbreakable bond between the two parts. This work is a representation of the act in which the transition from individuality to duality is contained, as a relationship of separation.

Also on view as part of the exhibition will be the series of the four “Burial Clothes,” works that are linked, as a kind of next chapter, to the sculpture. The technique of machine lace and hand weaving allow Elisabetta Cameli to obtain in these works textures that alternate transparencies and textures and symbolize the life pages of the personal diary of each individual, telling the existence with its continuous change over time. These works made in lace, become like skins, in which the insertion of strings becomes a representation of what is inside us and wants to emerge.
“The works, like real ecdysis, constitute what remains of us after a process of death and rebirth, thus of separation. These textile remains constitute a way of preserving the experience of one’s lived experience by showing the lacerations, losses and conflicts that lead us to the awareness of who we are, toward the necessary search for our identity and will be a stimulus to visitors toward a personal and intimate reflection”-explains Lucrezia Caliani, curator of the exhibition.

All information and the full program can be found at https://www.murodipinto.com/
Exhibition opening Friday, September 15, 2023, 5:30 p.m. Free admission subject to availability; info and reservations: 0542 678240 – rocca@comune.dozza.bo.it

Artist biography: ELISABETTA CAMELI
Born in Bologna, she graduated in Sociology and Modern Literature and later obtained a Master’s degree in Photography in Rome in 2011 at the Roman School of Photography and a diploma in Embroidery and Lace at Emilia Ars in Bologna in 2016. She will also follow several workshops that will go on to form her artistic constellation, creating a heterogeneous artistic path in which the textile medium becomes a landing point that binds all her training like the back of a tapestry. Through a gestural alphabet in which the symbolic power of lace and strings meet, she highlights the difficulty of separating and existing, conflict in all its forms. Her research stems from the analysis of personal identity with a focus on inner conflicts and the thresholds of existence that like traces run through human beings from birth. Her works are a deep reflection on the principles of memory of one’s own experience focusing on the cycle of separation and belonging that returns us to the uncertain and tormented dimension of existence. The organic materials she uses evoke skins, living bodies, muscles, viscera and organs, torn and at the same time tenacious tissues that return us elements in the balance, like thresholds or boundary lines, metaphors of the relationship between the inside and the outside, between the visible and the invisible, between birth and loss. The antinomy of these elements makes them inseparable from each other and at the same time indispensable for existence, in an eternal and unattainable search for balance in transformation. The artist’s works have been featured in national and international exhibitions: Scythia”, Ivano-Frankivs’k, Ukraine, XS Project”, Bergamo art Fair, Bergamo, Italy, No name gallery, Bologna, Italy, Whit roots and without”, Roots Art Gallery, Pisa, Italy, in competitions: The 11th International mini textile and Fiber Art exhibition, Scythia, Ivano- Frankivs’K, Ukraine, Miniartextile 32nd edition, Como, Italy. The artist has been selected to residencies such as “Ramo” in Caramanico Terme in 2022 curated by Giuliana Besana and the Palermo Summer School of International Art curated by Daria Filardo and Stefania Galegati.