What Remains, What Changes
The exhibition brings together approximately forty works from the major bodies of work developed by Maria Jole Serreli, including Ikigai, Animas, Il peso del sonno and Fili fuori telaio, while presenting for the first time the new body of work Senescenza. Fibre works and sculptures in ceramic and marble are brought into dialogue within an exhibition that deliberately avoids a strictly chronological structure. Works created at different moments reveal the continuity of a practice that, while constantly renewing itself, has maintained its identity throughout.
For more than twenty years, Serreli has developed a language articulated through different forms and materials, sustaining an ongoing reflection on the body, memory, relation and the role of art in the present. An important part of this practice has developed through her engagement with materials from her family home in Marrubiu, Sardinia: fabrics, threads and objects marked by decades of use enter her work carrying traces of the lives and gestures that preceded them. Sewing, embroidery and mending thus also become repositories of knowledge transmitted through generations of women, in which memory, care and repetition are interwoven with matter.
Over time, each body of work has taken shape through different forms and materials, without ever losing touch with the necessity from which it originates. Thread leaves the loom, knotting, wrapping, suspending and binding; when it encounters stone, the gesture of stitching reaches a material limit and transforms. The very matter of Sardinia – volcanic stone, obsidian and marble – introduces a temporality into the work that exceeds the human scale. What cannot be pierced is wrapped: the resistance of matter does not interrupt the gesture, but compels it to find a new form.
The title Senescenza derives from a term belonging to the language of biology. Within Maria Jole Serreli’s practice, however, the term moves beyond its exclusive association with ageing to become an image of continuous transformation, a condition in which every form continues to change without losing its identity. The works do not describe the stages of life, but invite us to consider change as a possibility for growth, relation and awareness. In this new body of work, this reflection also unfolds through the proximity between textile and body: stitches, folds and openings become traces of a continuity that does not depend on remaining intact, but emerges through transformation.
On the occasion of the opening, Gramma_Epsilon will present a publication dedicated to the gallery’s first five years (2021-2026), retracing its history, exhibitions and curatorial programme through images and archival materials. The exhibition is also accompanied by a bilingual catalogue featuring texts by Panos Giannikopoulos and Paolo Cortese, conceived as an integral part of the exhibition project.