SARA CONFORTI “Lalàgeatelier – Dispositivi Vestimentari”
Textile Museum of Chieri
Saturday, March 25 – 4:30 p.m.
Presentation of the project in residence by Sara Conforti and Hòferlab ass. Cult.
Saturday, March 25, at 4:30 p.m., in the spaces of the Chieri Textile Foundation and Museum (Via Santa Chiara 10/A), “Lalàgeatelier-Dispositivi Vestimentari,” a project-in-residence by artist Sara Conforti and Hòferlab ass. Cult. will be presented to the public, supported by the Compagnia di San Paolo and sponsored by Biella’s “Tessile e Salute” association in collaboration with its certified companies, which now lands in Chieri with a series of workshops aimed at creating a choral and participatory textile work with and for the citizenry.
Inspired by Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities/Women, “Lalàgeatelier-Dispositivi Vestimentari”
is a tribute to the most important city in the Calvinian frame, “Lalage,” whose name means murmur, light noise. An inclusive project founded by artist Sara Conforti in 2017 and combining artistic research, fashion and circular economy, production, education, care of the territory, and corporate social responsibility. The workshops, dedicated in particular to the techniques of recycling and upcycling, have as protagonists the users of Fermata d’autobus onlus and the Community Fragole Celesti and other fragile people, and are aimed at the creation of participatory textile works that arise from the recovery of discarded clothing and the reuse of valuable end pieces provided by the project’s partner companies and that allow the fragments of personal experience to be translated into a sewn form. This gives rise to “clothing devices,” works of choral and participatory textile art.
The project – in residency in the spaces of the Textile Foundation and Museum from March to June 2023 – will be presented to the public through a photographic exhibition and a talk, during which the cycle of “BOROTAROT” workshops, led by artist Sara Conforti, will be illustrated, during which textile pictographs will be created where personal narrative is interwoven with creative circularity and conscious manual skill.
Speakers: Chieri City Councilor for Culture Antonella Giordano, President of the Chieri Textile Foundation and Museum Melanie Zefferino, Egle Demaria (President Fermata d’Autobus Associazione Onlus), Monica Cerutti (Ambassador Donne 4.0) and artist Sara Conforti.
“With this event,” comments Melanie Zefferino, President of the Chierese Textile Foundation and Textile Museum, “the collaboration between our Museum and Sara Conforti, a leading figure on the international art scene and an activist for environmentally and socially sustainable textiles, continues. A figure with whom we started a collaboration in 2022 and who now breathes new life into our tailoring as well, with a view to possible future projects in synergy.”
THE ARTIST
Sara Conforti was born in Turin in 1973. Guest of Honor at the XIII Florence Biennale 2021 she received the Lorenzo il Magnifico Lifetime Achievement Award for her commitment to the fragile feminine. Her practice explores the complexities of the social and gender fabric along with social, political and environmental issues. Author of performance projects, artistic research and social sculpture that have as their focus the dress that from object-symbol of our voracious consumer society, becomes subject-perno capable of stimulating deep reflections around individual and collective identity thanks to the reactivation of the reminiscence process.
Since 2011 she has been conducting her investigation through the project Centosettantaperottanta, which identifies a space of exploration dedicated to the female universe where the public and private value of memory and experience meets the possibility of unveiling itself. Since 2013 she has authored the performance project 13600HZ Concert for Sewing Machines, an action that the artist builds around the sound of sewing machines. A choral work where the research between dress and habitus flows into the performative act.
Founder of hòferlab ass. Cult., Sara Conforti is currently artistic director and coordinator of the urban regeneration project “Circular Reflections. Mending the Territory. Between dress and habitus.” A project financed by City of Turin – Vallette 2030; Compagnia di San Paolo Foundation – Turin Proxima – Co-financed by Textile Association Salute and Circoscrizione 5 Torino, also unique in Italy in terms of the number of actors and recipients involved. At the Textile Museum in Chieri, 2022 was hosted with the site-specific collective project “Neroblaum fustaneorum. Canvases of memory.”
