Giulia Riva, UNEXPECTED, PROMISE, PRESENCE
The self-portrait, one of the genres dearest to artists, at least from the Renaissance onwards. In the 20th century, there is an all-female trend that places the self and the body at the centre of artistic research. Giulia Riva is a very young photographer who is growing through the lens of her camera, letting herself be guided and guiding her gaze year after year. What she exhibited in Edolo is a triptych of self-portraits, in which each compartment is composed of four images, interrelated to tell an episode, a feeling. The artist lays herself bare, and a personal story becomes brazenly public. Her mother’s illness, which will lead to her death, is terrible news that forces the artist to reconsider her face. In the central group, the mother’s name actually signs the polyptych, as in a cartouche of a medieval altarpiece. The third group is that of the infinitely painful peace of afterwards. It is the time of silence, in which to look at oneself changed, but not terrified.
THE ARTWORKS
Unexpected, 2012, photograph on pvc
Promise, 2014, pvc photograph Presence, 2015, photo on pvc