Then I Became a Stone

From Musical Notes to Marks: Manuela’s Journey

What happens when music becomes emotion? For Scannavini, discovering the compositions of Maestro Carmelo Travia—many written for cinema to create atmospheres and layers of emotion—sparked a creative process that moves from sound to mark-making and painting. Across the eight painted panels of “Quando il suono si fa segno” (“When Sound Becomes a Mark”), rhythm becomes a pulse. Through a QR code, visitors can listen to the music that accompanied the work and watch the video it inspired, conceived by Scannavini and featuring her paintings, directed by Jacopo Brucculeri, with cinematography by Lorenzo Lattanzi and choreography by Giulia Rosolin, who coached gymnast Sofia Biancari for the occasion. Here, the dialogue between artistic languages also embraces the body and movement. Backstage photographs by Ilaria Turini, presented as fine art prints on high-quality paper, are also on display.

Facing the installation is the large painting “La farfalla” (“The Butterfly”), which, together with the other large canvas, “Colgo un fiore per ogni nota spesa” (“I Pick a Flower for Every Note Spent”), expresses the generative power of emotion. In the latter painting, awakening takes on the colours of nature, including the red of berries: “And when emotion floods in with a red too dense, I welcome it, I contain it, and I pick a flower for every note spent,” the artist writes.

Stones, Books and New Correspondences

Even a stone can set the imagination in motion. Scannavini’s encounter with Giulio Marzaioli’s book “I Sassi” (“Stones”; Tic Edizioni, 2021) suggested a form she could inhabit: “The stone as something to dwell within, as a refuge.” This affinity gave rise to the exhibition’s title and a dialogue between writing and printmaking.

Her first artist’s book, a leporello featuring linocuts on Japanese paper, was unveiled at the opening and displayed exclusively on 20 October before moving to another Rome Art Week venue. It is accompanied by “Libricini in tasca: sassi tra ‘I Sassi’” (“Pocket Booklets: Stones Among ‘Stones’”), featuring passages from Giulio Marzaioli’s book alongside drawings by Manuela Scannavini, on Aralda paper.

Here, too, a QR code links to Marzaioli reading his own text, revealing what a “stone” means to him: an inanimate object, yet somehow superior to humankind itself, existing before our arrival and remaining after our departure. It is this perspective that resonates with Manuela Scannavini: a reflection on time and the layers held within a stone. Marzaioli writes: “The way humans use stones always implies an entirely unjustified assumption of superiority. Stones existed before humans appeared on Earth and will remain after their disappearance. That fact alone should give us pause.”

Paintings, prints, drypoints, monotypes and artist’s proofs also feature in the exhibition, revealing twenty years of artistic exploration sustained by curiosity and collaboration.

Nature as a Dialogue Partner

In her critical essay, art historian Eugenia Querci identifies a profound need to listen at the heart of Manuela Scannavini’s practice. Art offers a way to explore one’s inner world, bring to light what makes each person unique and open that individuality to encounters with others. The works thus trace a personal journey that becomes a shared experience. Curiosity, the search for correspondences and a capacity for social exchange that generates new ideas run through her painting and nourish its transformations.

Along this journey, nature becomes a privileged dialogue partner. It often enters the canvases physically through scraps of fabric, natural fibres, strands of wool, drops of resin, leaves and seeds, giving the surface a pronounced tactile quality. These materials invite viewers to pause and recognise affinities between the body and the landscape. In the large works, Querci observes, tree trunks evoke the human figure through a suggested resemblance rather than explicit representation. Breath, boundaries, introspection and motherhood emerge as themes within a reflection that remains relational, open to the presence of others.

In the more recent works, this physicality changes. Material gives way to a lighter painting, suffused with transparency and almost evanescent textures. White dominates the surface, punctuated by black brushstrokes, marks and isolated flashes of colour. In Querci’s reading, nature gradually becomes vision. This transition also embraces uncertainty and melancholy, while painting takes on a soothing role. The painterly gesture moves through unease in search of balance, offering viewers a moment of attention and contemplation. Like the whiteness of snow and its silence as spring approaches, it offers a way into the exhibition: an invitation to recognise, within the stillness of the works, the possibility of transformation.

Pian dé Giullari

The workshop of the “Associazione per la regolarità”, Pian dé Giullari has collaborated with Rome Art Week since 2021. Here, artists, writers and poets gather around ideas. Now its door opens onto Manuela Scannavini’s world: an invitation to follow one’s curiosity, discover her inner landscapes, share a perspective and rediscover, through art, the pleasure of encountering a different, vibrantly alive Rome.

Visitors to the gallery during the exhibition may also come across a farewell tribute to Fausto Delle Chiaie, “Ciao Fausto!” The text reflects on this being the first exhibition without the involvement or presence, in some form, of the recently deceased artist. A close friend of Carlina and Andrea Bottai, he worked in this workshop for many years. Here, alongside his partner, Irish artist Noreen O’Dwyer, he met fellow artists and, of course, his public.