Filo-diffusione_&

Filo-diffusione is part of a project first presented as a preview last November in Turin at the Artissima Art Fair and is structured as two exhibitions, the first of which has just concluded.
The exhibition project takes inspiration from the three exhibitions organized by Mirella Bentivoglio in the 1980s around the theme of thread, in which the use of thread was explored both as a tool for investigating the inner dimension and as a narrative device. In those historical exhibitions, the strongly experimental nature of such research clearly emerged, and for this very reason, more than forty years later, it is interesting to revisit those works today from an inevitably historical perspective.
While in the exhibition just concluded, Filo-diffusione_Ə, the use of thread was connected to inner research within an archetypal dimension linked to the mater element, in the second chapter, Filo-diffusione_&, thread becomes an independent tool through which stories are told, collective memories are rethought, countries and landscapes are described, and abuses and injustices are denounced.
Almost as a way of emphasizing the international character of the exhibitions curated by Bentivoglio, this second chapter presents works by artists from different countries and cultural backgrounds. It is precisely through their dialogue that one can see how, even today, “thread”, an ancient, archaic, and archetypal element, has retained its experimental character, despite being reinterpreted through contemporary technologies.
This second chapter of Filo-diffusione is identified by the symbol of the ampersand (“&”), which suggests and encourages connections, links, and relationships. Inclusion and conjunction are in fact two guiding principles of the gallery, which is no coincidence named Gramma Epsilon, Greek for the letter “e.”
For this project, Maria Jole Serreli has created a site-specific installation that pays homage to the area and the building where the gallery is located, originally devoted to the textile trade, and more broadly to women and thread as foundational elements of Greek culture.