“Delle piccole e grandi cose” Mirna Manni
San Mauro Pascoli | Italy 

 

It has been 170 years since the birth of the poet Giovanni Pascoli. Villa Torlonia opens its doors to artist Mirna Manni (Tuscania, 1958) and her exhibition ''Of Small and Great Things." A special tribute by a contemporary Artist to one of the greatest poets of the 20th century, in a layered and profound exploration of the themes of intimacy, memory, remembrance, life, and death. Using different expressive languages, the artist combines ceramic sculptures and paintings with poetic words embroidered on very light textures, accompanied by minor signs and fragments of the plant world, sewn onto linen and gauze. This approach succeeds in creating a lyrical and evocative composition that evokes suggestions and references to the poetics of Giovanni Pascoli. 

There are nine installations presented, to which one "auspicious" installation is added. In a new vastness of meaning and emotions, with a strong physical and tactile presence, stands today all the work of Mirna Manni, conceived for this exhibition. In her work, painting, sculpture, and 'sewn' words revive in one breath, creating a song capable of substantiating differently every ancient word. The virtues of art, it is known, offer us always spaces of freedom. Mirna Manni alchemically transforms, sculpts, and shapes - beyond all limits - raw materials, earths and clays, stone wares and engobes, canvases and papers, to create unusual forms and spaces rich in resonances. Each of his compositions seems to reject all limits, embracing bodies and volumes in extension and quantity. Thus, in a gradual becoming, Mother Nature reappears in a continuous transition between thought and image, matter and form. [ ... ] The signs refer us to things, to the little big things of our everyday life, of our mysterious hallucinatory and unreal existence that repeats itself over the centuries. To the ambiguity of living, to the violent actions of man against a Mother Nature that contains everything, Mirna Manni contrasts and offers us evocative emblems for those still willing to see and listen with the pure voice of the heart.