The exhibition presents a work-in-progress production whose main theme is the frog as animal, entity, symbolic figure and figurative emblem of the fantastic imagination, with its multiple iconographic readings.
On the one hand, the research is developed in a diachronic selection of images, whose interpretation, in some cases personal, of the figurative work is described, grasping its cultural significance through the analysis of the image itself, thus rediscovering its iconological and iconographic meaning. On the other hand, the research opens up to various experiments with drawings made with various materials (oil bar, felt-tip pens), of various sizes, representing portraits and postures of the animal. The Frogs, which approach human and natural expressions and movements, communicate with the viewer by projecting him inside their ‘lair’.
Giulia Martinelli's works contain, especially in the section dedicated to iconographic research, ancient customs, traditions, legends, memories and sounds that, when compared with the other part of the production, give life to a world somewhere between the real and the fantastic, between ancient and modern, realistic and ironic.
The frog, as an animal-archetype, has a magical connotation in the most contemporary view, sometimes positive, sometimes demonic, whose recurring character is the hybrid and multifaceted being.
The frog becomes the symbol of a dreamlike imagery capable of reinventing itself through transformation and imagination, as also taught by the collective imagination in which in fairy tales we see it as the protagonist of educational and moral teachings.
It is through this multitude of images that Giulia Martinelli presents us with a bestiary whose reigning animal is the Frog, in all its possible transfigurations and representations, used as a means to explore parallel worlds rich in symbolism and enigmatic narratives.
Giulia Martinelli born in the province of Livorno in 1992 now works at the Istituto Salesian Villa Sora in Frascati as an art teacher. After graduating from NABA in Fashion Design in Milan, she continued her studies in Art Therapy at the Fine Arts Academy in Rome, which brought her closer to the world of performance and dance, practices which in the last two years she has been deepening and studying through the short course in Performance Art winter 2024 at RUFA, conducted by Marta Jovanovic, and the one-year course undertaken in 2023 of contemporary dance -Body Experience- at the cultural association Controchiave, conducted by Manuela Cirfera.
Her artistic research focuses on the concepts of identity and self-expression, using the body as a means of interaction. Gestures, images, listening to the body and movement are exploratory tools that the artist translates through the use of video art, contemporary dance and illustration.
