Grazia Toderi: Teatro Terra

Grazia Toderi has developed an exhibition engaging with the spaces and the immaterial memory of the historic residence. Over 60 works from the late 1980s to the present, many previously unseen, have been installed: video, drawings, photographs, unfired clay and glazed terracotta pieces.

A project curated by Roberto Galimberti, with general coordination by Paola Eynard and the iconographical consultancy of Enrica Melossi, in which the castle and its park become an integral part of the work and the visitor experience.

The show develops around the two terms of the title: Terra, or Earth, understood as both matter and the planet observed by satellites, and Teatro, or Theatre, from the Greek théatron, “place from which one observes”, understood as a space of vision and performance.

On her first visit to the castle, Grazia Toderi perceived the spaces as the heart of a theatre: the walls and the trees in the park form the first enclosure, encircling the space, transforming our perception of the relationship between exterior and interior. Beyond that, the embrace of the Alps forms a second ring, while still further out, the boundaries of Europe and the planet itself are a potentially endless series of imaginary concentric circles.

The Manica Storica overlooks the ancient garden. The red hue characterising the works Marco (I Mark) and We Mark, born in 2019 out of conversations between the artist and her brother, the agronomist Marco Toderi, is a mapping or stratigraph in transformation evoking surfaces of the Earth or other planets, the depths of the cosmos or hidden meanders of the body. The exhibition features luminous crosshairs and systems of measurement traversing the space as if they are calculating distances, aiming, maintaining a position or focusing. In Rosso Babele (2006) a matter of a reddish light emerges that takes form, crumbles and subsides in an evanescent tower.

In the old Library the artist establishes a relationship between interior and exterior, intervening also on the window glass.

In the Manica Nuova we find Semper Eadem, created in 2004 for the reopening of La Fenice theatre in Venice, Il mondo privato (2003) in which the circular space of a garden theatre establishes unexpected perspectives, and Luci per K. 222 (2013), inspired by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, which reflects on the relationship between music, writing and light.

In the Europa triptych from 1988, “mappings that vary over time transform the ‘photograph’, understood as a moment frozen in time, into something that instead evolves without control”. The eruption, birth and subsidence in just a few months of Graham Island off Sicily in 1831 instead inspired the Oasisola works from 2015, realised in unfired clay to allow them to continue to evolve over time. On its surface is laid a transparent sheet with a diagram of a protractor. Disappearing map (2016-2018) and Dissolving Babel (2019) are stratifications of graphite and opalescent sheets.

At the entrance to the old chapel is the tapestry Il miracolo della peste, made for the cathedral in Cosenza in 2022 and featuring two white crosshairs on a reddish ground. Ombrello e Camomilla (1995), in a corner of the chapel, is placed opposite a window overlooking the park and on which appears again the circle of a protractor that rises from the ground to the sky following the movement of the visitor.

In the Manica Nobile, the works seem to turn to the sky and reference television and satellite transmissions. Messaggeri (1989), How much does it cost to catch a comet? (1991) Oblò (1989-1990), Camera (1997), Ragazzi caduti dal cielo (1999) show how satellites and television have transformed both our frequentation of meeting places such as theatrical spaces and the very concept of our vision of the world itself. The small, reddish iridescent ceramic We Mark pieces (2023) reappear as a constellation of shimmering earth on an ancient wooden table, while Red Dance (2026) presents “traces of luminous joy shining as we pass”.