A complex whirlwind of issues is addressed in the exhibition at the Gilda Lavia gallery: an airy structured atom dense with matter; a black and white landscape striking for the effectiveness and care with which it is assembled; a fractal that begins and ends in the female body; and an ephemeral, extremely concrete body-multitude which becomes a disruptive motif on which associated, aligned and complex issues gravitate. There is a certain way of “making” that looks at the whole, avoiding simplification, relating this body-sense with the Southern Question, the relationship with technologies, the phenomenon of fashion, anthropology and sociology, events in the news, the philosophy of sound, and both old and new myths and narratives. The architect of this spatial philosophy confined to the hic et nunc (here and now) of the Roman white cube is Pamela Diamante (1985), an artist from Bari who has always concentrated on these issues, always conveying an aesthetic of the relationality between bodies and minds.
The exhibition, entitled Le Mangiatrici di Terra, as Giuliana Schiavone explains: “is configured as an aesthetic and political question about bodies, subjectivities and geographies […] which moves fluidly between historical memory and contemporary reality.” The dialectical dimension between body and earth echoed in the title can be defined as the fulcrum of such questions, the place and space of a double oppression – gender and class – the same place and space where the crasis of resignification is catalysed.
So the wall works, portraits of the “earth eaters” – artists, activists, intellectuals, entrepreneurs and queer people who turn their gaze to the South as a critical place of reflection – present on the mouth some “visual tools”, individual modules of what are the sculptures to which they relate. These are elements that, despite covering their mouths, do not silence them, accentuating their sonic force precisely in the relationship with these sculptures which, on the one hand, welcome and are in dialogue with Gramscian thought and, on the other, mechanised, perform a kind of dance that in the aesthetics of the exhibition space breaks the silence, becoming a bodily and cultural presence.
The constellation of signifiers is then enriched by a final element, the sculptures made in conversation with Antonella Mirco, fashion designer and founder of Aendor Studio. One of these is accompanied by an audio track based on an idea by Diamante and produced by Carol Rollo, with the voice of Anna Maria Loiacono. In these works another dialectic emerges, this time between sexualisation and mechanisation, between critique of capitalism and Women’s Studies. The audio track that accompanies the work Ferro fragile (Fragile Iron) distorts some extracts from Bizet’s Carmen, the story of a femicide, rewriting and inverting its meaning, disturbing the melody and transforming the bel canto into an “instrumental” sound that begins with Carmen but that, through synthesis and sampling, becomes a social and political message.
“The Earth Eaters is a work that manifests itself as a polyphonic, multiform, hypermedia creature”, says Claudia Attimonelli, a sort of social and intellectual creature that sees reality and the meaning of existence to become a complex, problematic meeting point. This exhibition poses many multi-layered questions. However, by removing all unnecessary frills and by smoothing the surface, it acquires a luminous purity. It is, as already mentioned at the beginning, a synthesis of the whirlwind of questions which it exposes and then resolves with a clear answer.
Le mangiatrici di terra, Pamela Diamante solo exhibition, Gilda Lavia Gallery, Rome, 05.05 – 05.07
Images (cover – 1-2-3) The Earth Eaters, Installation views, photo by Giorgio Benni (4) Pamela Diamante, «The Southern Question», 2025, paper, ceramic and iron, 300×30 cm, photo by Giorgio Benni (5) Pamela Diamante, «Corpi in rivoluzione (Bodies in revolution)», 2025, iron, steel and ceramic, 270x230x230 cm, photo by Giorgio Benni (6) Pamela Diamante, «Ferro fragile (Fragile iron)», 2025, iron and aluminium, 99x15x146 cm, photo by Giorgio Benni.
