The Swiss Institute of Milan hosts the exhibition " Undomesticated Voices: Lara Dâmaso and Raffaela Naldi " from 14 April to 11 June 2022 .

The works of Lara Dâmaso and Raffaela Naldi Rossano for me are inextricably linked to the sea. From Raffaela's living room, overlooking the Gulf of Naples, the sea appears very close (and behind it, during my last visit in February, you could also see the snow-cloaked Vesuvius); when I think of Lara's works, I hear not only her voice in my ears, but also the waves of the Portuguese Atlantic.

The sea, therefore, the water. We start from here, and from the sea we approach these indomitable voices.In Saudade, Lara's video work, every so often we see the sea and, from time to time, we hear the buzz and lapping of the water that breaks against the rocks. In her drawings framed by mirrors, Raffaela has instead captured the wave motion, while the voices, themes and stories of her research draw life from a sailing trip from Naples to the Castalia spring, near Delphi. Suddenly we find ourselves surrounded by figures and voices from mythology. I think of Gaia, goddess of the Earth from which the Delphic cult originated, and of Pythia, the priestess and prophetess who fell into a trance due to the effects of gases released from a crevice in the ground.

I am thinking of mermaids, often represented as creatures half human and half birds or fish and, according to ancient myths, inhabit the cliffs to turn into rocks after death. In Saudade, Lara crushes herself against the dark stone, sometimes slippery and marked by the water. Where the sea meets the mainland and the wave motion shapes the landscape, at the point where we advance on an often unstable and undefined terrain. It is said that the siren Partenope (in Homer's Odyssey they were still nameless) was dragged ashore in the Gulf of Naples: it is from her that the city took its first name. Raffaela explains to me that, in particular in the Gulf of Sorrento, there is a beach linked to this mythological event, which has now become a cruising zone.