"ConFine "- Memory maps

In "ConFine – Memory Paths," Mara Di Giammatteo creates tapestries like fragments of poetic and urban devices, a threshold suspended between personal memory and collective geography. The work features hand-sewn wool embroidery on cotton fabrics, revealing an intricate, pulsating map, crisscrossed by densely packed streets and edges that ooze like roots or veins—referencing a broader dimension: that of the territory as a living body, a repository of human trajectories.

The dark thread that traces the city is not just a graphic sign, but a tactile script that evokes the rhythm of the hand, the rhythm of the needle, the slow stratification of memories. The writings that emerge at the edges of the fabric (fragments of conversations, domestic notes, frayed memories) intertwine with the topography of real places where the artist has actually lived and reworked them through memory. The stitched words and sentences are like thoughts that move away from the "urban" center and fade outward, a reminder that every place lives in the words of those who inhabit it.

The border evoked in the title is never rigid: it is a porous line, a fluctuating edge. The streets of the map descend in irregular filaments, melting downward as if the city, rather than being a closed perimeter, were an organism in constant emotional expansion. The border is therefore a "con-fine": a place where we are together, where the individual meets the collective, where personal memory intertwines with the shape of the territory.

The work possesses a delicacy that does not forgo complexity, which here becomes an aesthetic statement. The embroidered fabric thus becomes a banner of memory, a suspended place that invites the viewer to question what remains and what is lost, how life's paths are imprinted on the places we pass through.

In "ConFine – Memory Paths", Di Giammatteo manages to condense the cartography of the external and internal worlds into a single gesture. The work vibrates like an emotional map, where the paths of the city coincide with those of memory, and where each thread is a story that continues to transcend borders.

The exhibition will remain on display from September 19th until October 31st 2026.

From September 20th it will be possible to visit it during the Studio's opening days and times by writing to: lestudioartgallery@gmail.com