An image tenderly stands out in the new series of works by Guillermina De Gennaro.

It is a delicate and mysterious icon: the beautiful face of a young woman with oriental features.

The unknown woman, staring fixedly into space, is repeatedly reproducedon the wallswith silent obsessiveness. We find heron small or large paintings, intact or split, in different, soft colors. The technical process – digital prints with touches of hand painting – helps to convey a subtle balance between rigor and warmth, and emphasizes the veiled dimension of the whole, of something that emerges from the memory and the unconscious. Like the shape of a white ship on the verge of disappearance, or the evidence of a home concert of her father, her uncle and a friend of theirs, filtered through slowed film sequences and soft-focus video effects.

The music is clearly an Argentine tango, evoking the times when the three men played in Buenos Aires: a trace to reconstruct the intense mental and existential path around which the exhibition revolves. The work actually developsfrom an autobiographical inspiration: the artist’s relationship with her native Argentina, where she lived with her parents for seven years. Thirty years later, the experience of returning to Bari by ship resurfaces in the imagination of a child, also offering interpretations for her previous research on the theme of the dwelling, a clear symbol of identity.

Antonella Marino
2004