À jour. Laura VdB Facchini

Laura VdB Facchini has studied for a long time on the former convent of the Carmelitane Scalze at San Giuseppe a Capo le Case, the building that hosts the Galleria d'Arte Moderna, and made an intensive reading of the space, its colours and light. On this basis, he decided to create a site-specific work, inspired by needlework à jour, as a tribute to the nuns who for centuries had inhabited this space and who are still present in part of the monumental complex.

The whole creation is a huge piece of needlework, worked and woven by knotting strips of white and clear polyethylene. The resulting great three-dimensional arabesque, made of this material that can be drawn and modelled, is determined by the actual architecture of the façade and the cloister; the attachments of the ribbons have also been located on the pre-existing architectural surface.

À jour receives the visitor as soon as he enters into the museum, with a great project on the façade, and then follows him inside, in particular in the sculpture cloister and the cloister-garden. Here the art installation, interacting with the open space and the sculptures around it, creates new arabesques and suggestions. Along the two sides of the courtyard, the interweaving of the white and clear ribbons sweeps through the openings, connecting the inside and the outside, the fullness in the walls with the voids in the windows, creating new patterns and three-dimensional effects on the large architectural surfaces. The junctions and weaves give substance to the bas-relief, which generates plastic volume with its shadows. The material chosen, stretch film for packaging, has already been used by the artist in other site-specific installations in historical places, as it respects the more delicate architecture in which he works.

BIOGRAPHY OF THE ARTIST

Laura V.d.B (Van der Bol) Facchini, of Dutch origin, was born in Prato in 1962. She obtained a university degree in Design and Management of Events and Enterprises of the Arts and Entertainment at the University of Florence. From the late 1980s, she dedicated her life to the visual arts: she started the "MATRICI" series, works that investigate the sacred feminine declined in its multiple aspects, using various expressive means, from the most material and sculptural ones to photography, video and performance.

The sculptural and space vision that Facchini's artistic research is strongly influenced by is essential in her work as a designer and creative artist. This experience, combined with a mature creative flair, is used by the artist, in particular, in large site-specific installations where she uses touch-sensitive materials designed for historical and institutional locations. Among the most recent are: INTER-AZIONE, Cassero Medievale, Prato (2023); CANVAS, for CANAPA, production Teatro Metastasio, Prato (2018); IL GIARDINO DEI SOGNI, Teatro stabile Sloveno, Trieste (2015); CAMPI ELISI, Museo di Sant'Agostino, Genova (2017); DEEP SKY, Fortezza di Montepulciano (2018). We would also like to mention: the exhibition DIALOGOS, curated by Erica Romano, Palazzo Pretorio, Prato, Cassero Medievale, 2023; Art Action and Video ECCE DOMINUS, CARO PIERPAOLO, within the Pasoliniana review, Rome, Galleria d'Arte Moderna (2023); Art Action and Video FLORILEGIO, Tribute to Mimì Quilici Buzzacchi and Laura Grisi, event for RomaVisiva, Casa del Cinema, Roma Culture (2021).

In 2020, Laura Facchini founded the Cultural Association 'Wind Mill' in Roma, with the aim of promoting the deconstruction of gender stereotypes through art and culture and contributing to achieving equal opportunities in contemporary art and society, as well as encouraging and enhancing the work of women artists worldwide, and launched the project called 'Women Visual Artists Database', with an Open Call, open to all female artists of the 20th and 21st centuries.