Federica Gonnelli from Campi Bisenzio (BE)

How your way of working has changed?
Per me, as for many, this period meant a forced distance from the workplace, the inability to find the materials and produce in their own ways. At the dawn of the COVID-19 emergency, I participated with STUDIO 38 Contemporary Art Gallery a JustMad Art Fair a Madrid, with just one show entitled Hypothesis of happiness / Hypothesis of happiness, result of an in-depth research on one of the themes that is dearest to me: the border e, at the same time, lucid and premonitory reflection on the confinement that would follow. When the 2 March I returned from Madrid, I voluntarily decided to stay in solitary confinement at home for 14 days. In Madrid, the emergency was still a long way off and we looked with great apprehension at what tragically was already happening in Italy. The tension was palpable and grew with my concern because during the fair, in traveling and traveling I had inevitably been overexposed to the possibility of contagion and I considered it appropriate to protect the health of my loved ones as much as possible. I confess that initially I also saw something beneficial in this isolation, as well as a civil duty, because I needed a break after months of hectic work to prepare Hypothesis of happiness / Hypothesis of happiness, a decompression period after fair days e, finally, I needed to recharge and channel all the positive energies accumulated towards the many new projects that awaited me. In the first days of isolation, I resumed working between the dining room table and the PC desk, like when I didn't have a studio in the early years of the Academy, preparing graphics, reworking images, programming prints, drawing up lists of materials to buy, supports to be built and interventions, photo, video to be done in the studio as soon as possible, with the belief and the prospect that very soon, I would go back to InCUBOAzione.
Unfortunately, a few days before my isolation ended, the severity of the COVID-19 emergency made it necessary to strengthen the measures to contain the contagion, making all my hopes of continuing the work started in vain, finish the projects and exhibit the works. After a few days I spent with a lump in my throat, with a feeling of unresolved, of sadness for what was happening, of helplessness and absolute immobility, I have decided to pause all the projects to be completed. The only way out of this flooding was to design something new, experimenting with the materials accumulated over the years in the warehouse. So I have selected various types of small format papers and cotton fabrics to be used as supports, ecoline, graphite and watercolor pencils combined with water-sensitive prints to test new methods of solvent-based coating. Thinking about a new project has definitely helped me to spend these days and to look to the future with a wider and deeper field of view that is not limited to tomorrow., or to phase two, but it goes further, thus it was born You’re (not) h/alo/ne. From the beginning of isolation, I have kept a sort of intimate visual diary consisting of synthetic self-portraits accompanied by short written notes, a way to mark the monotonous passing of the days, extremely similar to each other, but still different, as well as the change in my face, certified copy of the day before e, at the same time, non-compliant copy. Until a few days ago I considered this diary a diversion that would have remained private and unpublished, then a rare and extremely beautiful atmospheric phenomenon happened which changed the destination of this private establishment and definitively gave shape and content to the project. On the morning of 16 April around the sun a halo has formed, visible from much of central northern Italy, due to the presence of cirrus clouds, which contain tiny ice crystals inside. The remote sharing of an event of this type made me reflect on the global situation we are experiencing and made me think, through a play on words alone / alone / alone / alone, "You're not alone" to an English song from when I was a little girl. In the song "You're not alone" by Olive, alone / alone / alone translates to alone, same transcription of the Italian alone, but with a different meaning. Finally, halo in English becomes halo, aura, corona (term much in use in recent months, Unfortunately) but also synonymous with veil. The same and different repetition of my self-portrait is separated from the private story and mine, albeit only hinted at, physical description, becoming a portrait of the other and a collective story. Nothing happens by chance and, mostly, what happens “naturally” is always a good omen or in any case it is a response or a message from nature that should not be ignored, he is the man who very often distorts, misunderstands, mistreated, rob everything materially and symbolically. There will be time to resume paused projects, in the meantime, You’re (not) h/alo/ne will be part of the collective 40 days curated by Mattia Lapperier at “Quasi Quadro” in Turin next November, an exhibition that already offers itself as an interesting opportunity to reflect on the period of forced isolation we are experiencing in recent months.

We are dealing with a new time and space. What are you discovering or rediscovering about yourself?
This dramatic period puts us all to the test, it needs to be lived differently and will mark an inevitable change in the life of all of us. It is a suspended space / time, of delay, waiting, a space / time made of "in the meantime". In the meantime I do this / I will do this later, but in the meantime what? All this meant for me not to be bent by the space / time of the Coronavirus, but to bend this space / time in my favor. The important is, as far as possible, don't procrastinate, nor now, nor when the emergency is over. A space / time, to which I wanted to give a more intimate dimension of sharing of essential contents. A space / time, dedicated to quality and not quantity, that I did not want and do not want to fill by force. A space / time to which I do not want to give credit for having made me draw definitive lessons or conclusions, because I don't need a pandemic to reevaluate my family relationships and friendships, because I've always done all this and I do it constantly following my spaces and times every day.

What you're missing? Your personal experience of "absence" and "lack".
Loneliness doesn't scare me, I was leading a fairly withdrawn life even before the restrictions, lonely, but not alone, also in my work. I miss good company, I miss my close friends and those scattered throughout Italy and beyond, in this moment in which the distances are zeroed and we are all physically distant. Today it has become even more obvious as an absence, a lack, is heavy compared to a presence taken for granted. I miss them, in addition to studio work, the physical space of the studio itself and my other places. I miss my city, Florence, that when I am sad or angry it reconnects me and makes peace with the world, I miss its light on spring mornings, its noises. I miss the streets and squares around which my life as a student and then as an artist developed. I miss my trusted shops where I print my images or where I buy my work materials. I miss museums, the exhibitions, the inaugurations, concerts, the shows. I miss the trains, the departure stations, of arrival and those of passage, travels ... At the beginning of my isolation, I decided to reread, after 15 years, "The man who mistook his wife for a hat" by Oliver Sacks, a book that wonderfully manages to shed light in the deepest darkness of disease, a book in which we talk about shortcomings, absences, losses and inevitably also of their opposites: the excesses. A book whose rereading has become of fundamental importance in this moment of emergency, in which we fight against a devious disease, bouncing between opposing feelings of anxiety and hope, rationality and irrationality, selfishness and solidarity, with too much or too little time available, closed in the narrow and full spaces of our homes, observing the meeting places of our immense and empty cities. I don't like crowded places, I am attracted instead by empty rooms and abandoned spaces and these days seeing the images of our deserted cities creates a deep malaise due to the contrasting desire to violate restrictions and emptiness, to the suffering of which I can hardly hold back the tears. In particular, Among the various losses that Sacks recounts, I was struck by the case of a patient who had lost his sense of smell: "" I had never cared for it. Usually one does not think about it. But when I lost, it was as if I had suddenly gone blind. Life lost much of its flavor… one does not realize how much the "taste" is actually smell. If people odor, you smell the books, you smell the city, if you smell spring, perhaps not in a conscious way, but as a rich and unconscious background behind everything. Suddenly my whole world was radically impoverished ". There was an acute sense of loss, a sharp yearning, an authentic osmalgia: the desire to remember the olfactory world to which he had paid no conscious attention but which, as he now understood, it had been a kind of "basso continuo" in life ". I miss the background, I miss the smells of my city, even the most terrible now that the air has become extremely thin, rich in oxygen, free of impurities, now that the evening air already heralds the arrival of summer. I'm out of breath. That same lack of smell and breath which, among other things, are sadly among the symptoms of Covid-19, a sign of further sharing at a distance.

To date, what have been the immediate consequences of the spread of Covid-19 on your work for you and what do you think the long-term consequences may be?
In the months of April, May and June I would be involved in various events – three group exhibitions, three solo shows and a series of presentations - which are currently postponed, but that is not said it will be possible to recover. Ironically, now I regret that tangle of commitments that awaited me in recent months, that same tangle that in February I cursed myself for having created!!! The staff will certainly be recovered as soon as possible Like isolated clouds at STUDIO 38 Contemporary Art Gallery, of Pistoia, whose inauguration was scheduled for 18 April. The project was featured in the first issue of magazinepĕra magazine, published by the ATTIVA Cultural Projects ETS Association. The sample, which will be accompanied by a text by Giulia Cacciola, is made up of a series of works, different in size and shape. The works, starting from a reflection on the formation of clouds, they continue analyzing from a conceptual point of view the presence of the same clouds in the sky and by extension, to the limits of the impossible, in any other empty space, finally to investigate how clouds relate and interact with the human being and his identity. The presence of the cloud becomes a body in the emptiness of the sky, totally emptying the human corporeity and making it an absence. With the void caused by social distancing, but unfortunately also from the disappearance of an entire generation that is succumbing to the virus, talk about "dissipation", from the novel "Dissipatio H.G." by Guido Morselli, in which the term dissipatio takes on the meaning of evaporation to describe the sudden and enigmatic disappearance of mankind, except for the protagonist, it will be even more current and compelling. Covid-19 will surely and inevitably leave a void in our lives and more materially in our curriculum vitae, a trace of a dissipated time or that we have partially managed not to dissipate, but which in any case will never be returned to us from a business point of view. It is very difficult to say what the long-term consequences of the pandemic will be on my work or on the cultural system more generally, because the variables involved are many and the possible scenarios, where pessimistic and optimistic visions alternate, infiniti. Everything will depend on the economic situation that will arise and on the measures that will be taken, but above all also from how we will react psychologically to the restart after isolation. I would like to say that new opportunities will arise from this crisis, that we will draw new lessons from it, that we will be better, that we will be more capable of networking, that we will gain more awareness, that we will be more supportive, but I don't know how much of this will materialize, how much will be forfeited by each of us, how much I myself will be able to steal, because memory is short and the ability to forget and make mistakes is innate in man. Certainly, in these months when all culture has been digital only, a great step forward has been made, unimaginable before the emergency, but the virtual experience can never completely replace the real experience. Digital cannot be the only source of knowledge, experience and information, the two realities will have to go hand in hand, dialoguing and integrating more and more, without opposing each other. The only certainty is that what comes next will be our future, the only one we have available, we will be different and we will have to face with all our strength and abilities and with new tools and methods, different problems. Because nothing of the first will be the same after.

Federica Gonnelli was born in Florence, city ​​in which he carried out his artistic studies. Lives and works on the border between Florence and Prato, where he opened the "InCUBOAzione" studio. From 2001 he exhibited in personal, collective, competitions and participated in various residences, a practice that has acquired particular importance in his research. To the theme of the border, that characterizes his path, is dedicated “Hypothesis of happiness / Hypothesis of happiness”, the project presented between February and March 2020 with STUDIO 38 Contemporary Art Gallery a JustMad Art Fair a Madrid. Each organza veil or double exposure photograph, elements that contribute to the significance of the work are crucial, imposing momentum on the observers. Federica's work allows multiple layers of materials and interpretations, each of which ends up supposing another, so that the reading can never be said to be completely exhausted.
Its reference galleries are: Studio 38 Contemporary Art Gallery, Pistoia; Clouds Contemporary Art, Montesarchio (BN); Artforum, Bologna; The fortress, Gradisca d'Isonzo (GO); Nellimya Arthouse, Lugano (CH). www.federicagonnelli.it