Project 005
Ephemeral Age
09 November 2023, Santa Rosa House
Ephemeral: something momentary, transient, fleeting, a moment in time.
Ephemeroptera, on the other hand, is a species of insect, apparently the one with the shortest life span ever, about 1 hour and 30 minutes in total.
We might call certain phases of human life ephemeral, such as adolescence a time when the perception of self and the outside world changes, and it is precisely this theme that Roberta Savelli investigates. She portrays, in a delicate and sincere way the adolescent world that to an adult gaze very often appears incomprehensible and very distant.
Everyday we experience fleeting moments, which do not involve particular changes or reflections; even images can be ephemeral, like the millions of photographs we see by scrolling through instagram feedback, or watching television, Valerie Chua traps some of these daily images and experiences in her own works, creating compositions; freezing gestures, such as the moment of trying to pet a cat on the street, moments that if observed more carefully could trigger even very strong and deep emotions but that in everyday life we do not have time to perceive.
Valentina Biasetti's works play between presence and absence, fullness and emptiness, the concrete and the ephemeral.
The subjects portrayed look like modern nymphs, eternal maidens who immerse themselves in water with soft cloths in a suspended and poetic, undefined space that leaves room for the imagination of every viewer.
Ephemeral can be our memories, Zuh Dai analyzes with her sculptural works how a memory can change its state from a vivid and clear memory to a vague and fuzzy one, no matter how hard we may strive to keep a moment intact in our memory it is bound to fade, to change shape and color, despite our will.