Surrealist embroidery or painting with eyes closed
Self-design of That road there? It doesn’t go anywhere. There’s no use walking down it.
How far does it go? It doesn’t go anywhere. Then why did they make it? Nobody made it. It’s always been there. But no one ever went to see it? You’re a hard head. If we tell you there’s nothing to see… You can’t know that if you’ve never been there. from “Fables on the phone” by Gianni Rodari
We’ve never experienced a situation like this before.
We had never imagined living it even when we looked at the deserted streets of Wuhan.
Surrealist embroidery is a playful and libertarian practice.
It doesn’t seek defined thought or precise measures because both the inside and the outside now seem to float in a suspended and unknown, surreal, shapeless time and the same harbinger of possibilities and surprises. Somewhere we are landing. With our eyes closed because we turn inside, with our eyes open following the light that draws new maps.
Material A4, A5, or whatever you prefer, which you can retrieve from cereal packaging or invitations to past exhibitions.
Any material you have at hand and that has colour: acrylic colours, watercolours, crayons, crayons, pencils, chalks, markers, lipsticks, eye or lip pencils. Brushes. Needle and cotton thread.
A vocabulary. Instructions Find a corner of the house with the sun, and in that rectangle of light, lie on the ground.
Paint or color the card as you like, without thinking about it too much, create a base of eventful or sober color for how you feel now.
Let it dry while you basking in the sun. And if there is nothing to let dry you take that time anyway. With another material or color that stands out, close your eyes and draw your soulful self-portrait.
You can peek, but not too much. Take the vocabulary. Open it at random and point your finger at a word.
Keep it in mind. Repeat the random opening motion and point your finger as many times as you feel necessary.
Keep in mind the words you touch. Stay in the sun a little longer while you connect the words together and spin them, assemble them as they sound and speak to you. With a pencil, gently write them on the card and find a position for them. Use the needle to pierce the words following the line of your writing, spacing the stitches so that you don’t tear the card. Embroider slowly, with breath.
Bio
Paris (1975 ), lives and works in Milan. Her work narrates human, animal and vegetable moments, mixed with the events of history, politics and the absurdity that results from them. She examines the idea of identity, its multiple derivations, its overlapping of existential perception and its intimate and shared overlapping. She declines her practice through different media including embroidery and writing, on canvas, fabric, paper, urban walls and shop windows, with thread, paint and adhesive. Among the solo exhibitions: Due respiri, un passo, double solo show at Eroici Furori, Milan, 2018; Richiami, Archimania, Sanremo, 2017; Encyclopédique, at SibillaArte, Carassai, 2016 and at Caffè Internazionale, Palermo 2016. Group exhibitions include Beyond Language, a collateral event at the Istanbul Biennale 2019, curated by Benedetta Casagrande and Lara Ozdogan; Appunti sull’universo, curated by Mariolina Cosseddu, Sassari, 2018; Trascendenze Bocs8, during Roma Art Week 2017; in Naples at Intragallery, 2016; Chinatown Biennale, Galleria Davide Gallo, Milan, 2017 and Vis à Vis, Galerie de l’Institut Français, 2016; In March 2019, after winning the competition, she realized the mural La Danseuse, for the association Sos Donna with District A, Faenza. She has been part of the artists’ collective of 59 Rivoli in Paris since July 2019. She participated in the Festival Memorie Urbane in 2016 and in 2015 in LE MUR, rue Oberkampf, Paris.
