CAROLINA MAZZOLARI DON’T LOOK BACK ORPHEUS

The exhibition "Don’t Look Back Orpheus" by Carolina Mazzolari, presented in collaboration with Studio Pratha, Simone Selvatici, and Ilaria Martello, is a profound reinterpretation of the Greek myth of Orpheus. Through tactile and visible media, Mazzolari explores the human side of the myth, weaving geometric and ethereal elements into her tapestries and her general practice. Mazzolari’s work Geometric cuts on Carolina Mazzolari’s tapestries remind the metamorphosis of color and form realised by orphic cubists; they were artists that got inspired by the harmony of the sound of Orpheus’ lyre and the power of his poetry. The intensity of music crosses the threshold space between life and death, this makes Orpheus brave enough to step into the unknown. Carolina Mazzolari’s light and ethereal textiles emit waves, inaudible sounds that are translated into music by Simone Salvatici. In particular, the plastic weft – in Don’t look back Orpheus – weighs down the lightness of the fabrics, reminding us the inevitability of death and the rebirth of the human existence. 
Carolina Mazzolari translates Orpheus’ lyrics into a tactile and visible dimension, transforming light textiles into plastic ones to emphasize the human side of the protagonist of the Greek myth. The artist manipulates the textile to express the weight of the condition Orpheus has to observe to recover his love from the Underworld. Transparent ethereal textiles contrast the plastic geometric weft, remembering the lightness of the ethernal spirits of the realm of the death, that exceptionally bridges the finite realm of the living. The bright and airy space where the large fabrics are exhibited – in Carolina Mazzolari’s installation – recreates the light of the moment before Orpheus looked back to Eurydice. The intense gaze of Orpheus transforms the bright shape of Eurydice into a shadow, which is fated to return back forever into the darkness of the Underworld, holding Hermes’ hand. The natural lighting – from the roof of the exhibition space – sourrounds the textile and represents Eurydice’s suspendend moment between life and death.