COMMISSION #8 – ALA D’AMICO
Ala d'Amico's Iuno (Rome, 1985) is a reproduction, on a wooden support, of a lily: a flower with a strong symbolic value, associated with the concepts of fertility and virginity in the pagan and Christian traditions respectively. Blooming from the drops of milk that fell from Juno's breast, which were able to give Hercules superhuman strength, it represents the generative power of the Roman goddess. Depicted between the fingers of the archangel Gabriel in the episode of the Annunciation, it embodies the innocence of Mary of Nazareth and the mystery of the conception of her son Jesus. In both cases, it represents a symbol of fruitfulness, procreation and life.
In Ala d'Amico's panel, realized through a silk-screen printing technique, the flower dominates the center of the composition: its close-up rendering, rather than a still life, seems to juxtapose the image with the representations contained in botanical treatises, of a more purely scientific nature. At the same time, however, the small inconsistencies visible in the images of the petals and pistils betray the use of an tool different from the photographic one, corresponding to a small, portable scanner.
Through its use, which is usually limited to flat surfaces, the shape of the flower turns out to be reworked by the same gesture of the artist who, while approaching the plant, reproduces a movement similar to the one executed for applying ink on the silkscreen frame. 23.09.23 23.09.23 is part of a larger series of works entitled Erbacce and dedicated to wild plants growing among the city cement.
In this sense, the project is presented as an anthology - literally: a necklace of flowers - testifying to the constant and irreducible vitality of Nature.
Ala d’Amico, 23.09.23,graphite silkscreen printing on fir plywood, 59,5 x 42 cm, single edition.
Text by Giulia Gaibisso
Ala d’Amico (Rome, 1985) is a visual artist and founder since 2021 of ORME, an experimental screen printing studio. Fearing that the constant proliferation of new images would only nullify them, Ala d'Amico became interested in the life of existing images, studying their possibilities for transformation both on a formal and conceptual level. The question the artist asks herself is what is, or what could be, the life of an image. The silkscreen technique thus becomes the appropriate medium for working on the dualism between a taken image and an appropriated one, between the principle of an unicum and that of a single image within a series, between the concept of ownership and that of use. Ala d'Amico's work thus finds itself investigating the relationship between matter and image. Both analog and digital methods of reproduction are used in her works. The images also often come from different sources, such as history books, stills from TV newscasts, scientific texts, appropriating them in dialogue with personal images within new compositions to emphasize alternative narratives and possibly uncover latent meanings. Her exhibitions include Fragments, La Frontiera, Paris (2017); Histoire Naturelle, La Frontiera, Paris; SESSION #1, MdM Gallery, Paris (2016); Et.alia/1, Sleep Center Gallery, New York City (2015). In 2015 he won the Paula Rhodes Memorial Award.