Slow Metabolism by Valeria Carrieri

exhibition curated by ife collective on the occasion of Meeting Gardens Festival * radicrille, within the Meeting Gardens project. Practicing the rural through art and care for sustainable and inclusive perspectives, as part and with the support of the European Solidarity Corps
October 19-26, 2024
Biblioteca la Vigna, Vicenza

Slow Metabolism exhibition by Valeria Carrieri takes its name from a series of sculptures born from a chance event during a period of significant change for the artist. The event in question was the fall of an owl from a tree branch in the garden of the Lac o Le Mon Foundation, San Cesario (LE), during the Painting Symposium residency. At the wildlife recovery oasis, it was discovered that it was an adult female, in good health, and perhaps—since owls sleep during the day—had simply had a bad dream. The identification with the owl led the artist to imagine a sculpture of it, which, with the collaboration of artist Luigi Presicce, took on a metamorphic form with a pattern similar to that of pine cones in traditional southern Italian ceramics.

Aware that the process of metabolizing the pain from the period she was going through would be slow, Carrieri then associated the owl with two figures linked to slowness: the turtle and the snail.
Metabolic processes represent a complex set of reactions between organisms and substances, triggering a series of movements of destruction, growth, and renewal—an array of non-linear developments within both inner and outer, visible and invisible contexts. (…)
Slow Metabolism by Valeria Carrieri is an attempt to reveal, associate, and combine these processes by addressing them from a perspective of layering and resonances of hybrid bodies, micro-macro movements, inner-outer plural digestion, where the works are to be discovered in the most atypical corners of the rooms of the Biblioteca La Vigna.

Discover Slow Metabolism exhibition sheet
Photos by Giulia Capraro