In February 2025, Spazio Iris, in Spoltore (province of Pescara), hosted Evo oblïato, the exhibition by artists Francesca Romana Cicia and Eirene, with critical text and curatorship by Laura Catini, dedicated to Lucia Spadano.
The Evo oblïato exhibition is part of a series of six curatorial projects that all use the adjective “Natural”, although they differ according to the choices of each individual curator.
The next one is the third chapter, curated by Beatrice Ciotoli and Irene Iodice with the participation of the artist Giulia Cauti. The opening on April 5th will involve women of all ages who wish to participate in the collective performance on fertility, by joining the open call currently active in the territory of Pescara and its province.
Evo oblïato, together with the other projects, will leave a trace in the Naturale catalog that will be published at the end of the entire exhibition cycle.
The second chapter of the Natural Nature project, curated and with critical text by Laura Catini, is a conceptual and visual reflection on the nature of time and memory, questioning the consolidated certainties of perception and the relationship between memory, oblivion and identity.
The title of the exhibition introduces the concept of a time that is lost, fluid, dissolved in oblivion, and at the same time in continuous transformation. The curatorial reflection takes its cue from Heideggerian ontology, according to which time is intimately connected to being and its finitude, and, from this perspective, looks at nature not as a simple chronological measurement, but rather as a fluid and subjective experience, that lies between the contemporary and the eternal, between the persistence of memory and its inevitable erasure.
The artistic research of Francesca Romana Cicia and Eirene is part of this theoretical framework, questioning temporality and the relationship with the past: art thus becomes the place of an investigation that calls into question the concept of representation and the very meaning of memory, opening the way to an aesthetic dimension that oscillates between concreteness and abstraction. The works on display move between different media, creating a material and conceptual dialogue on the fragility of memory and its stratification. Francesca Romana Cicia explores the mechanisms of acceptance and resistance of experience through suspended images and blue atmospheres, metaphors of silence and inner depth. The work Come una conchiglia nel bosco (Like a shell in the woods) becomes a symbol of this research: an unidentifiable form, placed in an undefined habitat, that becomes an emblem of the reworking and distortion of memory. Eirene, on the other hand, investigates time through a poetics that intertwines identity, space and perception. Outer Spaces focuses on the internal cavity of the egg, a generative symbol that has never been elevated to an autonomous subject, which here becomes the site of an investigation into the creation and transformation of matter. His research is organized into a series of works that evoke a liminal dimension, between the visible and the invisible, the real and the imagined, focusing on uncertainty and fragmentation.
The exhibition, through the comparison between the two artists, constructs a narration on the instant that moves between aesthetic paroxysm and the dissolution of reminiscence. Here, oblivion takes on a dual meaning, both positive and negative: on the one hand, as a defensive tool of the human mind – a concept explored by Freud – and on the other, as a condition that undermines memory and its ability to preserve the past. The idea of a cosmic and indefinite time, which challenges the linear conceptions of history and cultural development, is reflected in the choice of materials and their manipulation. The works have a tactile and sensorial dimension, capable of evoking the fallibility of remembrance and the fragility of memory, while the concept of chronotope, or the relationship between time and space, becomes living matter, exploring the tension between the eternal and the mutable, between sedimentation and evanescence.
In Evo oblïato, time is deconstructed and redefined, taking on a liquid and fragmentary form, while the works on display invite the public to reconsider their relationship with memory and with the perception of the present. The idea of a universal space-time is questioned, giving rise to an aesthetic universe where uncertainty and ambiguity become tools for investigation. Through research that draws on philosophy, psychoanalysis and different artistic languages, the exhibition offers food for thought on the human condition and our perception, and materializes a universe in which memory is never fixed, but always changing, suspended between the visible and the invisible, between remembering and forgetting, in the fragile balance of preserving what inevitably tends to dissolve.
images: “Evo obliato”, Spazio Iris, exhibition view, ph. Francesca Pascarelli
