STRANE COPPIE | CONFINI – La linea della materia

On Saturday 31 October 2026, from 5 to 9 pm, La linea della materia opens at the Atrio delle Trentatré in Naples. The exhibition is curated by Simona Di Sciullo and features work by Iole Cilento, Luana Di Sarno and Ellen G. The opening launches the programme of the first day of events at the Atrio delle Trentatré for the cultural festival Strane Coppie | Confini. The programme continues at 5.30 pm with La linea della memoria (The Line of Memory), a tribute to Anna Toscano, and at 7.30 pm with La linea del sangue (The Line of Blood), dedicated to Stephen Crane and Franz Werfel. La linea della materia brings together three artists from Campania around the theme of the boundary, understood not merely as a geographical or political limit, but as an intimate, perceptual and material condition. The boundary becomes a threshold between the visible and the invisible, between what is shown and what remains safeguarded, between private experience and the construction of the image. From photography to painting, from sculpture to collage and through to performance, different languages come together in an itinerary in which body, matter and space become tools of exploration and transformation. This dialogue takes shape in the Antiche Cantine of the Atrio delle Trentatré, a historic space defined by the presence of tuff and piperno stone. Each of the three rooms houses the work of one of the artists, setting architecture, memory and contemporary practices in conversation. The space thus becomes an integral part of the exhibition, bringing the material of the place into relation with that of the works. For the exhibition, Iole Cilento presents an installation/performance that grows out of a meditative practice centred on the body, breath and gesture. Following La Yurta del Respiro (The Yurt of Breath, 2025), the artist continues her research with a new action, a “meditation of the heart”. A basin filled with water and ink is crossed following the four cardinal directions: the movement of the body and the rhythm of breathing act upon the liquid surface, generating unstable, unrepeatable traces. From this process emerge works on paper and fabric made using the Japanese ink-marbling technique suminagashi. These are gradually added to the display over the course of the exhibition, transforming it over time. Moving between performance, painting and meditative practice, the work brings to the fore the artist’s most intimate relationship with painting, long kept within a private and silent sphere. Gesture, breath, water and ink become the instruments of an open-ended process in which the image takes shape from the encounter of body, matter and time. In the photographs of Luana Di Sarno, the body becomes a site of transformation and a surface of relation. The images arise from encounters with the sitters and convey fragments of lived experience and of a vulnerability that is hard to put into words. The construction of the image is layered: backdrops made by the artist, interventions on the body, from makeup to clay, and transparent or reflective surfaces such as plexiglass and mirrors alter the perception of the portrait. Photography thus opens onto a dimension that is at once installation-based and painterly, in which overlays, distortions and transparencies transform the surface of the image. The inkjet prints heighten the material quality of the works and help the images move beyond the two-dimensionality of photography. The research of Ellen G. stems from the juxtaposition and recomposition of fragments drawn from different fields (art history, nature, personal imagery) which, in her papiers collés, are decontextualised and reassembled into open configurations, remaining only partly recognisable. This tension between unity and multiplicity finds particular expression in the installation Quel che resta del giorno (The Remains of the Day, 2013), composed of 65 hand-modelled terracotta elements coloured with slip. Arranged in a circular structure akin to a labyrinthine system, the elements form a shape that changes with each installation and is perceived differently depending on the viewer’s distance and point of view. Material, form and arrangement build a system poised between fragmentation and cohesion, in which what appears separate can enter into relation once again. Through different practices and languages, the three artists develop a body of research in which matter is not merely the support of the work but becomes part of the process: water, ink, paper, fabric, clay, plexiglass, terracotta and tuff build a relationship between body, image and space. La linea della materia proposes the boundary not as a definitive dividing line, but as the place where forms, materials and experiences can meet, transform and generate new images.