Paper Garden. The thread and the sign: assemblages, grafts, diary-book, Exhibition Santa Maria della Scala, Siena

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Paper Garden. The thread and the sign: assemblages, grafts, diary-book

From 15 February to 8 June 2025

Santa Maria della Scala

Piazza Duomo, 1, Siena

Closed now: open at 10:00

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The Santa Maria della Scala Museum Complex and the State Archive of Siena, from February 15 to June 8, 2025, host the monographic exhibition Garden of Paper. The thread and the sign: assemblages, grafts, diary-book, dedicated to Primarosa Cesarini Sforza, an artist with a wide international activity whose research integrates embroidery, drawing, painting, and assemblages on canvas or paper supports.Curated by Beatrice Pulcinelli, curator at the Giuliano Briganti Library and Photo Library, the exhibition is promoted by the Ancient Hospital Santa Maria della Scala Foundation in collaboration with the State Archive of Siena and investigates the artist's personal expressive language through over 30 works set up in the two different locations, including 'diary-books', grafts, and the site-specific installation inspired by the ancient “Orto e Giardino dei Semplici”, once located under the factory of the Great Hospital of Siena.Originally intended for the cultivation of culinary and medicinal plants - initially for the use of the hospital's apothecary and later accessible to university students as well, so that they could practice and integrate live lessons, linked to the birth of the “Lectura simplicium” chair at the end of the 16th century - the Garden of Semplici inspires the title of the exhibition, which in its reference to the garden and paper aims to suggest the deep dialogue between Cesarini Sforza's works and the environments that host them. At the inauguration, on Saturday, February 15, 2025 at 11:00 am in the San Galgano Hall of the museum complex, following the institutional greetings by the Ancient Hospital Santa Maria della Scala Foundation, the exhibition curator, the artist herself, Cinzia Cardinali Director of the State Archive of Siena, and Elisabetta Miraldi, Professor of Pharmaceutical Biology at the University of Siena, will speak. Characterized by the use of silk threads in dazzling colors, applied with a non-traditional process where tangles of knots and filaments lead to the creation of a new symbolic universe - which, although arising from a mnemonic process, is never nostalgic -, the works on display are articulated on multiple levels of the museum complex.In the Giuliano Briganti Library and Photo Library, the artist's 'diary-books' are exhibited - a unique production that involves the use of found albums, handmade papers, pages of ancient maps or musical scores - and the 'grafts' built with fabric leaves applied to plant twigs. In the former Refectory Rooms, there are instead the larger format works of imagined gardens, microcosms animated by continuous repetition, and the site-specific installation inspired by the “Orto e Giardino dei Semplici”. The project is completed with a section at the State Archive of Siena, where the historical documentation related to the Ancient Hospital is preserved. Among these, the precious planimetry Plan of the Garden and Garden called of the Semplici under the Factory of the Great Hospital of Siena of 1756 by Florenzio Razzi dialogues with the Artist's Book created for the occasion by Primarosa Cesarini Sforza.

	opens - closes	last entry
monday	10:00 - 17:00
tuesday	Closed now
wednesday	10:00 - 17:00
thursday	10:00 - 17:00
friday	10:00 - 17:00
saturday	10:00 - 19:00
sunday	10:00 - 19:00

Paper Garden. The thread and the sign: assemblages, grafts, diary-book

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