Inside the exhibition Il tuo cielo è verde. Letizia Cariello’s solo exhibition at the Filatoio Rosso of Caraglio, beauty is at the heart of the Thinkerbell installation, a monumental golden cage, a magical and enigmatic object from which comes a piece of music, the opening aria of Bach’s Goldberg Variations. A piece performed by pianist Gile Bae, who gave a special performance on Sunday 12 September, realised in collaboration with Galleria Massimo Minini, by Om Project in Turin.

The musician performed the opening aria of the Goldberg Variations live, translating into sound the idea of architecture, enclosed in this aviary transformed by the artist into a loom and embroidery, sculpture and installation at the same time. Cariello’s bond with architecture is strong, in his geometries and volumes that become frames, gates, calendars and velvets, which open like perceptive doors, in lyrical abstractions evocative of an immaterial elsewhere.

In the performance, a nuance of the concept of limit and boundary is declined, suggesting how beauty can fully embody this condition, turning itself into a cage. Inside a gilded aluminium Art Nouveau architecture, woven with red thread, a beautiful woman plays enchanting music on the piano, creating an evocative and alienating image to contemplate. This image of beauty, apparently harmless, is however crossed by a perturbing thrill, cracked by the double meaning of the representation: a person in a cage, prisoner of a situation that appears and generates beauty. A contradiction in terms. Yet she, the main subject, is in captivity. A subtle, cruel, ambiguous captivity above all. How can beauty imprison? This is a fundamental reflection on our time, which seeks ideal beauty, imposes it, often makes it an unattainable utopia, something extra-human that condemns existence, especially that of women, to a continuous and irremediable tension and dissatisfaction that consumes the present and life.

© Mattia Gaido MAG Photos