Secret Garden: at CUBO Gallery in Parma, the installations of Alessandra Calò

"Secret Garden," an exhibition of Alessandra Calò’s installations, opened at 8:30 p.m. Saturday, May 19. Curated by Andrea Saltini, the exhibition is located at CUBO Gallery on Via La Spezia in Parma, where it will remain until June 28.

Secret Garden is a composite installation consisting of a photographic part of ancient found slabs, a literary part, a botanical part and finally a structural part, functional for public enjoyment. Secret Garden is a journey into the imagined lives of unknown women, in which Alessandra’s images, together with the words of different authors, accompany us telling us about possible lives, past but present.
In fact, each of Alessandra Calò’s negatives is juxtaposed with stories by female writers of varied backgrounds, inspired by the images themselves and with which they form a single body. For this exhibition in Parma, the author chose to tie herself to the territory thanks to the literary contribution of Beatrice Baruffini, author and director of Parma’s Teatro delle Briciole, who composed the unpublished work Irma. The female population enclosed in the backlit vitrines has grown over the years and continues to grow by germination, starting with a photograph that makes illustrious female writers, poets and songwriters such as Rachele Bastreghi(Baustelle), Letizia Cesarini(Maria Antonietta), Angela Baraldi, and Mara Redeghieri fall in love. Through those negative portraits, the authors narrate an imagined life, a fragment of existence that resurrects and offers a second life - almost a redemption - to anonymous and silent women at times faded, of whom only the image of the face remains etched in oxidized silver salts.

Loneliness, feminine strength, family care, and love are the fundamentals around which the pieces in prose and poetry revolve and, all together, end up constituting a choral narrative about the condition of women from the 19th century to the present, to be read after performing a ritual gesture, that of opening the small drawer with the courageous will to discover its contents. Contributing to the creation of a complex installation with multiple planes of interpretation is the presence of the botanical element enclosed in the individual cases: the symbolic aspect of the union between the photograph and the composition behind it of individual leaves, dried flowers, and shrubs collected one by one by Calò, is very strong, and ideally represents that garden that everyone encloses in their soul.

A protected and serene place, a hortus conclusus of medieval memory where one can find oneself and make peace, but which at the same time also reminds one of a living context in need of care. Secret Garden, however, acquires a complete sense only when the light in them is turned on: the black envelope thus reveals the layering of the ancient slab and natural elements that, upon frontal observation, merge into a single image.

On the occasion of the exhibition in Parma, where the Secret Garden presented will be about fifteen, the original set-up project, realized thanks to the collaboration of Andrea Saltini and Sergio Taddei and the support of Settedifiori, is not to be forgotten: the garden in fact trespasses from the showcases and invades the gallery space, involving visitors and creating -among suspended roots, outstretched branches and a suggestion-laden lighting- a dreamlike and emotional game between inside and outside, between microcosm and macrocosm, between conscious and unconscious.
The exhibition is accompanied by a critical text by Marta Santacatterina.
Born in Taranto in 1977, Alessandra Calò lives and works in Reggio Emilia as an artist and photographer. Already at the beginning of her production she experiments with the use of new languages that allow her to delve into themes related to memory, identity and the language of photography itself. Her passion for art and the visual world developed independently and with an eye always on photography. Over the years she has specialized in ancient printing techniques and the creation of real installations.

Exhibition hours: Wednesday from 4:30 to 7 p.m., Thursday from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., Friday from 4 to 7 p.m., Saturday from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. and 3 to 7 p.m.
For information you can visit www.cuboparma.com or email cubogallery@gmail.com.

Secret Garden: at CUBO Gallery in Parma, the installations of Alessandra Calò

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