Letter to Serena Nono
Daniele Del Giudice

 

Dear Serena,
only a year ago we were in your studio looking at your new paintings, remember? We talked about hands. The hand theme , I said, hands-figures, hands with features, hands-characters that protect the face and guard its mistery; hands, faces, shoulders would suddenly come out of the dark background of the paintings, from the shadows only to return to the shadows as an unexpected apparition.
This year too, there are new paintings in your studio, we look at them, and it seems to me that the whole body has grown from those hands and heads, developing and unfolding the tension that before was kept there, almost as an announcement.
This body originates in the picture, from you as well: a self portrait which is nevertheless a portrait of the species, female gender, a new yet primordial creature, the memory and actuality of the body .
I don’t feel the precariousness, the eventuality of epiphany, anymore, but rather the historicity of staying, of being. Also: to stay for.., to be about to…, states of waiting, bodies on the verge of movement. So is the woman crouching on her heels, so is the woman with her head reclined: domestic actuality, existential habits, and, if I may say so, at the same time: antique feminine roots.
And, am I right if I speak of a continuity of the theme, and if I say that even these bodies release what before was concentrated in the faces and in the hands, they also contain, hold back the gesture, and is it this act of holding in that gives them beauty and strength?
Hands joined in front of new faces, arms folded in the new sleeping figures, their faces more relaxed, the sleeping figures more abandoned, yet something still limits and protects their being, or perhaps it contains it, a place of boundaries and concentration, a new configuration of energy.
In this way, it seems to me, you proceed from painting to painting, and from season to season you change and remain the same, with increasing talent and results, along a totally personal and climbing path, where I can only follow you with admiration.
And I am disappointed by the inefficiency of words, that lie uselessly on the borders of your paintings. Words that stand in front of paintings, like every other spectator, they observe, they listen to what undeniably is not speech; they are filled with wonder and delighted by the misterious voice of your painting.

Daniele Del Giudice