Anna Maria Tanzi Open Studio

Exercises 3–10, Embroidery on Eight Linen-Blend Nappies from the Bridal Trousseau

Matter accumulates over time; thoughts and visions settle in layers and eventually erupt, giving the work form and substance.

This is how AMT creates, and this is how Exercises 3–10 came into being.

She opens an old wardrobe containing the household linen, and nappies appear: objects that are now obsolete, yet deeply connected to the idea of female fertility. Her thoughts turn to motherhood and to the stories of many well-known women whose lives were marked by complex, unfulfilled or denied experiences of motherhood. Great women, brilliant women… Marie Curie, Maria Montessori, Maria Callas… or ordinary women, unknown women, strong and courageous women who break the law in order to make their desire to become mothers possible.

She then reads Chiara Tagliaferri and her odyssey to experience motherhood at all costs, even by resorting to gestational surrogacy (GPA).

But how can one fail to consider the fundamental role of men in procreation? Without seed, there can be no sprout, and yet the male figure seems to fade into the background beside the precious womb in which the fruit grows. The idea of an equal role returns later, when the difficult task of being mothers and fathers is shared.

And so the moment arrives when thought seeks to take shape. 

Everything began with the nappies, and they will provide the foundation for her work with embroidery, one of her distinctive artistic signatures. Elsewhere, she has used embroidery in its traditional form; here, she felt the need to transform stitches into “marks”, like pen strokes on a sheet of paper, like doodles. Starting from the punto lento, a stitch used in tailoring, she created one of her own. In other words, she transformed an age-old technique, based on order and precision, into tangled threads with an unstable form. Thus, the stitches do not come together to create a precise design, but rather a shifting tangle that, nevertheless, takes on the appearance of a mass and produces a recognisable shape. CPZ

(1) Chiara Tagliaferri – Arkansas. Storia di mia figlia. -  SIS-MONDADORI