Monumetale embroidery, installation site specific
Artistic interventions on the ceilings of religious buildings often represent the promise of a future paradise by starry nights or divine sun rays, clouds laden with cherubs, ascents of the Virgins in majesty.
The embroidered Paradise proposed by Julio Villani operates a transmutation in this representation: it is an inverted sky, made of worms and lizards, pebbles and dew clouds, constellations of dust that serves here as a celeste vault. The poetry of Manoel de Barros breathes here and there in the composition.
The objects of language are regularly used by the artist as a poetic trap; here, combined with drawings, the texts constitute the narrative ingredients of an emotional territory intended to create a register of reality.
Because under his candid airs, this is what the artist is talking about: developing the ideal society – our image of paradise on earth – depends on the lines we trace, the traces we leave there.
Diving in the opposite direction of gravity – planting our feet in the sky, forcing us to turn our faces upwards to read the verses of the poet with his eyes resolutely turned towards the ground – Villani traces, by lines that carry our actions from ground to ground – from sky to sky. a mediation between narration and action.
A slightly transparent veil serves as a support; just enough not to hide what the future has in store for us: there is no isolated paradise from reality that protects us; we harvest what we embroider.
Roberta Saraiva Station
Work realized in the workshop of Lina Bo Bardi, in collaboration with Camila Prado and Flauzina Rocha Ribeiro | NGO Costurando Sonhos, G10, Paraisópolis. Participation: Thais Borducchi, Laura Del'Acqua, Beatriz Cereser, Vinicius Amaral, Pedro Avila, students of the Centro Universitário Belas Artes.