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COMMISSION #1 – Gaia DI LORENZO

Gaia Di Lorenzo (Rome, 1991) works on the complexity of images. Conceived as articulated and potentially misleading representations, her works demonstrate the impo ssibility of a synthesis and understanding of existing events and structures.

Each work should be read in relation to the process and context that generated it and as the product of a sedimentation of ideas, stories, and references that do not summarize existence but rather recount its contradictions. In this respect, casting, engraving, painting and sculpture are elements that build and express different levels of meaning.

Gaia Di Lorenzo's Iuno 2 (pomegranate and peacock feathers)is a glass work, whose circular shape recalls a plate and a shield, objects that belong to different semantic areas, respectively associated with both the domestic and war. Yet, they both illuminate aspects of Juno, a vital and resentful goddess at once, who can celebrate life and at the same time humiliate it.

The glass surface reveals the emblems of the pomegranate and of the peacock feather: one symbol of rebirth and vitality, the other a tribute to the loyalty of Argos "with a hundred eyes", accomplice of the goddess in the revenge perpetrated against Io, victim of Jupiter's lust.

The choice of the two attributes corresponds to the complexity of their semantic fields and the ambiguity of their meaning. Once again, it is the context that determines its meaning and allows for differentiated readings: thus the feather can be understood as a symbol of vanity or associated with the concept of loyalty, while the pomegranate can evoke the idea of fertility as well as martyrdom.

The overlapping of the two images, achieved through the use of two different techniques (painting and glass etching), evokes for the artist a duality of natures perceived as contrasting but coexisting, never one predominating over the other.

Gaia Di Lorenzo, Iuno 2 (pomegranate and peacock feathers), 2021

Painting on etched glass, 45 x 45 x 45 cm (approximately)
Courtesy of the artist and ADA, Roma

Text by Giulia Gaibisso

Gaia Di Lorenzo lives and works in Rome. Works independently and in collaboration with others, and her practice includes installations, sculpture and painting. Gaia holds a BA in Fine Art from Goldsmiths University and a BA in Literature and Philosophy from Tor Vergata University. In 2018 she founded CASTRO, a free alternative learning programme for artists in Rome. In 2018 she founded CASTRO, a free alternative learning programme for artists in Rome. Recent projects include Temmatemenetè, Una Boccata d’Arte by Fondazione Elpis, in collaboration with Galleria Continua, We contain each other (Breve storia di una sponge), at ADA, Rome, and Sitting Amongst, with Pietro Librizzi, at Jupiter Woods, London.