FIORI E FIAMME

Year: 2021

Place: Babs Art Gallery, Milano

Curator: Paola Stroppiana

Works:
Costellazione vegetale
All the Fire, The Fire
Plantas doradas
El Zopilote
Filo Spinato
Wing of silk

BABS is pleased to host, starting September 15, 2021, the solo exhibition of Elizabeth Aro, curated by Paola Stroppiana. The Argentine artist, who has been residing in Milan for several years, presents her first collection of artist jewelry created exclusively for the gallery, in close dialogue with some of her works, including several new pieces.
In May, as a preview of the artist's solo exhibition, BABS selected "La Rosa Herida," a bronze and enamel pendant inspired by the work "Costellazione Vegetale," for a charity project dedicated to the Rava Foundation in support and protection of women, a project that received an excellent public response. Elizabeth's exhibition, which has always been sensitive to themes related to nature, memory, the female condition, and the concept of "the other," viewed from the perspective of someone who personally belongs to two different cultures and has faced both physical and cultural migration, is a precious opportunity to deeply explore the imaginative and profoundly emotional world of the artist. This exploration begins with her ability to engage with different techniques: drawing, photography, but especially sculpture, created from precious fabrics that she sews, shapes, and embroiders herself. Often expanding to decidedly installation-like dimensions, her work engages in dialogue with the architecture that hosts it—private galleries and public spaces.
Her sculptures delicately yet incisively bring to life a true landscape of the soul inspired by literary sources, dreams, and reflections on the continuous changes that human beings must confront. In her art, they find a lyrical key of metaphor and allusiveness filtered through the poetry and lightness of a refined and complex practice.
A lightness that transitions from material to thematic: delicate oversized flowers, flames resembling many small souls, impalpable wings, sinuous trees with dense branches of leaves. Unexpectedly soft fabric turns into barbed wire, reversing its taken-for-granted repulsive meaning—thorns finally rendered harmless. Thus, the transition from weaving to forging in precious metal within this personal vocabulary is both coherent and particularly moving: jewelry, like weaving, carries an ancient non-verbal language loaded with expressive and ritual force that it has always embodied. Adorning oneself is one of humanity's earliest expressive codes; Elizabeth considers it as such while reinterpreting it through contemporary visions closest to her own cultural heritage.
From being an installation piece, the artwork becomes wearable in a natural transfer—at times unstoppable and touching—like a dreamlike projection transforming from sculpture into talisman, protection, poetic declaration, self-affirmation. The daily choice to wear a flame or many small flames becomes a sign of life and passion; a wing like a desire; a rose; barbed wire—rendered harmless and precious—as a declaration of strength and female empowerment. These are not just symbols but signs of a silent yet gentle revolution—courageous and rich in grace and wonder.