dap – Luigia d’Alfonso and Ada Perla
The First steps together
In 2012, after following individual paths aimed at developing a personal creative process, Luigia d’Alfonso and Ada Perla decided to share a workshop.
This daily relationship stimulated the birth of a four handed project. Dialogue, the fertile ground of their work, shaped a conceptual construction whose origin is in the surname that binds them: Perla (they are sisters-in-law). Research, studies, comparisons have long engaged them to develop the concept that was dear to them, the pearl and therefore the sea. This image of the pearl slowly changed from an exogenous element into an inner suggestion and opened new channels of communication. The osmosis between the two individuality allowed the two artists to arrive at a common language, Sabìr.
Sabìr
Sabìr is the name chosen by the artists to identify this new form of artwork that refers to the language spoken in ancient times in harbors and docks around the Mediterranean Sea.
A Sabìr is a unitary whole composed of several canvases called “canovacci”, each canvas is a complete but open story that leads to the next -sometimes in a continuum, sometimes in contrast - and the meticulous and delicate work of juxtaposition and binding carried out with thin gauze - to integrate the space left by the “missing words” – weaves the fragments together and renders a complete narration.
TOTEM
If the Sabìr are the plots of the main speech, the Totems are the words left on the sidelines. In composing the larger canvases, the two artists leave some fabrics aside, like fragments of a speech, unspoken phrases that remain suspended in the air. Poetically and rhythmically recomposed, these fragments (called lacerti) take the shape of a Totem.
The art process
They move differently in the space of their studio, from the table to the floor to the wall, it is a continuous verification of the story that is being revealed, and that will take shape only with the work of binding between the cloths with the help of thin strips of gauze. The old sheet thus returns to be recomposed, like an ancient restored code.
Sabìr, their language, a hidden alphabet is born from a gestation of years, a secret even to themselves, which does not tell written words, but evoked sounds, voices that echo from distant experiences yet never experienced.
Ciaccerata
Painted fragments of fabric left over from the Sabìr and from the Totems, collected along the way, are combined with playful spirit in the Ciaccerata… a chat among the streets, confidences on the doorstep, voices from the markets, whispers, murmurs, hums... a colorful multicultural acoustic mosaic.