Lucia Bubilda Nanni – Follow the Thread

THE ARTWORK

CANTICO

By Barbara Pavan

The title of Lucia Bubilda Nanni’s work steals the song to the wild rooster from Giacomo Leopardi’s Operette morali (Song of the great wild rooster): “su, mortali, destatevi. Il dì rinasce: torna la verità in sulla terra, e partonsene le immagini vane. Sorgete; ripigliatevi la soma della vita; riducetevi dal mondo falso nel vero” (“mortals, awake. The day is reborn: truth returns to earth, and the vain images depart from it. Arise; reclaim the burden of life; reduce yourselves from the false world into the true.”) A mysterious rooster, endowed with reason, touching the sky with crest and beak as he sings memento mori to human torpor to awaken it.

But this is only one of the Songs that the artist weaves into this large work, which, set up on the ceiling, observes us from above with what seems to be, at times, a judgmental manner. This song, with equal intensity, is echoed by the evocative power of the Song of Songs, sublime celebration of love – sacred or carnal – however it has been interpreted over the many centuries of its writing, a stubborn exaltation of life imbued with the deepest humanity.

It is creation’s hymn of praise from St. Francis of Assisi’s Canticle of Creatures, finally, that extends throughout the work, a prayer that unites heaven and earth in a single embrace and seals the artist’s hope to awaken and hope that from this awakening a new canticle will be born.

THE TECHNIQUE

For more than fifteen years, the artist has been drawing with her mechanical sewing machine Bernina model 1008 – she started leaving the threads behind out of sheer laziness. Her hand was educated in drawing from an early age by a stage designer uncle who forbade her to do art studies at school age, arguing that she had to find her way by other means. After graduating in Philosophy, she decided to devote herself to painting and drawing, transferring her love of knowledge and research into that space.

Prompted by Ernst Jünger’s entomological vision, she began to study insects and she bought a sewing machine to increase the difficulty of the medium: just as she did not like to swipe the brush on the canvas but rather to drip threads of paint on the supports to draw insects, she wanted to experiment with the machine needle. It takes great control of gesture to transfer what the eyes see to the needle: hers is on the same level as drawing from life. The sewing machine is a violent, steely, heavy, eminently rational instrument, rationalizing emotions, guiding them, controlling them.

And precisely this her artistic practice has taught her: control over her emotionality.

E proprio questo la sua prassi artistica le ha insegnato: il controllo sulla sua emotività.

THE ARTIST

Lucia Nanni, aka Bubilda, was born in Ravenna in 1976. After her scientific diploma, she graduated in Philosophy from the University of Bologna. For over fifteen years she has elected the sewing machine as her instrument of choice for a research that finds in art the natural continuation of the historical- philosophical study: the history of ideas as the history of forms and materials. Exhibition projects include “Profili cuciti di santità” at Fondazione Dino Zoli in Forlì; “Bocche Cucite” with Matteo Marchesini at Palazzo Rasponi delle Teste in Ravenna; “Annotazione II” at the Biennale Disegno in Rimini; “Sul volto, di umani e insetti,” Salone del Mobile, Milan, Galleria Orlandi “Ro Walksto ASAP.” She created the stage clothes for the band Negrita at the “Italian Song Festival” (Sanremo, 2019). Her work, “Tumult,” created in collaboration with literary critic Matteo Marchesini, was the winner of the XXII edition of the “Libri mai mai visti” competition. Parallel to her artistic research, she is involved in fashion and costume.

Recent exhibitions and participations: LUCO, Galleria Italia, L’Aquila: “Appunti su questo tempo”, International Exhibition, Valtopina Embroidery Museum and CasermArcheologica Sansepolcro; ”Inferno-Paradiso”, curated by Barbara Pavan, BAF Bergamo, WTA World Textile Arts Italy Salon; “Fiberstorming” (Maria Egiziaca), ExAteneo Bergamo, tra gli eventi di BG BS Capitali della Cultura; “Sedimenti Gioielli Indiscreti” Bubyperry, a cura di Adolfo Carrara, HOMI Milano; “Anàstasis” (Sonnambuli) a cura di Giovanni Gardini, Santa Maria dell’Angelo Faenza.

THE SPONSOR COMPANY

;RIMESPARSE BY DIAMANTE MARZOTTO

From eyes to hands, the art of the world in an accessory.

;Rimesparse’s workshop is like a privateer vessel that has sailed around the globe. The cargo hold contains crates, baskets, suitcases, and jars of all sizes; on the deck there is a long workbench and industrious disarray; you hear the creaking of the wooden floorboards, stairs, and ceiling, so constantly that it makes you reconsider that you are really on dry land, especially if you run on deck to grab an iron on the fly, because the captain, Diamante Marzotto, has decided to hoist the sails and change harbors. The family pioneered the textile industry in Italy as early as the 19th century; her mother, Marta, was the “restless muse” (model, fashion designer, patron) and a true link between the artistic and intellectual worlds of the last three decades of the 20th century, and she, Diamante, in all of this, has conquered a noble art: she has eagle eyes in finding wonders. There are those who collect wonders, catalog them, enumerate them and archive them, and those who transform them: isn’t making an ancient kimono or a bullfighter’s precious traje de luz into strips just as Dadaist a gesture as making a Mona Lisa mustache? Perhaps some confidence is needed, no subjection, certainly much wisdom in orchestrating so many dissimilar details into a single form: Trifari crowns, silver buckles, Tuareg crosses, ex votos, Murano beads, brocades and Italian cashmere, et voila a Rimesparse accessory.

IG @diamante_marzotto_rimesparse