The two-persons show SCAGLIE PARTY is part of BIENNALE TECNOLOGIA 2020, MUTAZIONI, organized by Politecnico of Torino. It includes Ornella Rovera’s installations and Silvia Fubini’s photographs, original works inspired by Petalo, recycled PET, provided by Dentis Recycling Italy, leading company in the plastic recycling sector…..
The images made by Silvia Fubini are part of a narrative cycle fairytale like, a story still to be written, taking place in a universe of multicolored flakes. Her still life are the mirrored images of the real world.
The subjects are small plastic beings who could easily be the characters of an animation movie. They are in constant transformation and enter into a relationship with the flakes to create new environments: oceans, lands, glaciers.
The arctic fox, the toucan, the snake, the dolphins and the cheetah meet at the SCAGLIE PARTY, a magical moment when plastic bottles stop to pollute our planet to become multicolored flakes and then bottle again in a kaleidoscopic virtuous circle…..

Paola Stroppiana, Independent Art Historian and Curator
SCAGLIE PARTY, from the catalogue of the show.

The pictures taken by Silvia Fubini lead to a sort of game I define “ The serious game if Art“, nothing cute, but accuracy of execution and thought. Her choice of animals: toucan, dolphins, arctic fox is definitely more difficult than dealing with dogs, cats or hamsters. The peculiarity of her photographs is the use of plastic as an art material, small flakes becoming the environment where animals live.
I am thinking of the photographs “Nascita” and “Artico”; in the catalogue we learn that chicks came from Persia and their presence on earth dates back to 4000 b.c. and that the survival of the artic fox is now in danger.
The thought is not only deep, but projected towards the circularity of the system, we cannot live without the awareness the system is changing, Gaea is holding us to account and using recycled plastic material goes in the direction of eco-sustainability.
Silvia in this way created a ‘world’ not only ‘green’, in fact she imagined a word where man never appears except in the photograph ‘Attacco’ where a cheetah faces a ‘small’ man. Who is winning?
In these charming pictures the flakes are brilliant, the light is ravishing, the animals come out from Silvia’s personal bestiary, symbols of grace, lightness, pride…..
Silvia Fubini answers with her photographs to the great themes we must face now, to endless changing sceneries…..

Claudia Migliore, Contemporary Art Curator
www.lobodilattice.it
13-11-2020

The series entitled Questioni di Tempo, exhibited at the group show Tracce Mnestiche, consists of photographic compositions, veritable ‘Contemporary Vanitas’, built with objects coming from emptying the apartment of the author’s parents, physical elements, by that time without a given placement and an intended use. A feather fan, an ancient dictionary French-Spanish, a silver pen, forgotten family memories, sediments of lives from former generations, have suddenly become abstract. Silvia Fubini, while feeling the absence, composes these still life with a seamless background in a similar fashion she did years ago in New York where she worked as an assistant of advertising photographers……..
She chooses to work with analogical photography on double weight paper and handpainting the images with oil pigments, a moment of introspection and meditation on the past, sometimes executed years after the photo shot………
The objects of the ‘family memory of the artist’, in the name of the mantra ‘Dislocation’, become the true stars of this photo project. It began in 2009 and it’is now suspended in the present of the spectator while fluctuating on the continuous space like the cosmetics and the candies she was giving a meaning in her American past…….
In her composition Silvia Fubini combines family things with fragments of vegetable life and some souvenirs wishing to introduce in the field of view different elements conveying this way a sense of lightness.
The painted photographs from Questioni di Tempo are named after the estimated date of the older object entering the family history, in the order: 1850, 1884, 1920,1943, 1955, 1963, 1970.

Daniela Giordi, curator: Ancient and Contemporary Photography
Archiviare il Presente
Tracce Mnestiche from the show catalogue

Tracce Mnestiche, Archiviare il Presente is the title of the exhibition curated by Daniela Giordi, the outcome of the collaboration between ABF|Scatola Chiara, Fotografia Storica e Contemporanea and the Federazione Italiana Associazioni Fotografiche.
This show is about the research of four artists experimenting the relationship between Memory and Photography…..
Silvia Fubini with the series Questioni di Tempo presents the unsettling memories one feels when emptying family rooms from objects speaking of a deep absence.

Valter Giuliano, Journalist
Così ti archivio il presente
La Stampa 23-10-2020

The widespread of Photography led to identity ‘Photography’ and ‘Memory’ and raised the common perception of the possible superposition of photographic work, of a technological nature, and mnemonic activity, of a mental nature.
The various projects in the show, ‘shared memories’ about the theme of declarative memory and/or visual archiving are the expressive outcome of four different approaches from the conceptual and authorial point of view. Their works aren’t neither the direct transcription of moments of life nor the photographic shots recording events in real time, but iconic and symbolical elaborations…
www.archiviareilpresente.it

“Art unites the difference. Based on this assumption, we enter the space of this art show , conceived by Architect Ernst Hunzinger, where six artists, coming from different backgrounds, express their creative energy.
Silvia Fubini shows three sculptures of great poetic and intellectual power. They are kinetic sculptures, mobiles flying over our heads while developing three Platonic Solids, symbols of perfection, They unveil the true nature of the photographic landscapes printed on the outer face of the polyhedrons”

Gabriele Fasolino, 2017 From the introduction to the show
BOSCOBILLIAGIARDINA
FUBINIPERSICODONORA’

“Each of the four faces of the pyramidal solid, Tetraedro senza Inizio, showed at Palazzo Ducale in Genova and Museo Borgogna in Vercelli , contains a landscape: a city panorama connected with art and mysticism , or a glimpse of natural elements like water and air charged with symbolic meaning as well. Tetrahedron is one of the five platonic solids, a regular polyhedron whose faces are perfectly equilateral. It’s an absolute solid reminding us not only of Geometry but also of Spirituality, it makes us think of the East (evoqued by the image of a gigantic Buddha) and also of the West (the glass pyramid of the Louvre). The prevalent color is sky-blue, Kandinskij’s favourite, who used to match it to the triangle and to the highest idea of spirituality. Every face of the tetrahedron is an opportunity for a thought, for a journey into the world and inside ourselves, like a magical game of mirrors, of reflections, of transparencies”.

Lorella Giudici, Professor of Storia dell’Arte all’Accademia di Brera, Milano.
From the catalogue ‘End in Nation’ Vol.2, 2016

“Silvia Fubini turns her attention both on city landscapes and private ones. I am thinking of her series about New York and of her show ‘Moving Back’ where she shot personal pieces of her life.
A common element of her works is a poetic vision, first developed and then shared.
This is particularly clear in her recent reportage about construction sites in Torino.
Silvia Fubini has followed the entire evolution of Palazzo del Nuoto by architects Isozaki and Maggiora with her ‘Architectural Moments’ thirty photographs suspended on panels along the stands and the sides of the main swimming pool. She searches in hidden corners, in temporary environments, amid sacks of concrete, suspended wires and pools deprived of their element. Juxtaposing a structure’s full and empty spaces, Fubini is able to create images that evoke the unconscious and a human element, the vital contribution of businesses and workers.
Never indulgent with an aseptic point of view, the photographs are always more then a reportage, they become poetry.”

Edoardo di Mauro Professor of Storia della Critica, Accademia Albertina, Torino
From the catalogue ‘Palazzo del Nuoto’, Città di Torino

“Silvia Fubini looks at the existing connection between construction and destruction, decay and restoration. This process in not always a logical, linked together sequence; on the contrary it leads to the dislocation of objects, the disorientation of time and vision.”

Lorella Giudici, from the presentation of the show End in Nation

“This exhibition plays with the thread of memory and documents different moments of Silvia Fubini’s recent relocation to Italy from New York. The artist does not employ photography as a means to reproduce the dullness of daily life, but rather uses it in an intimate, psychological way. Her shoots symbolically bring back reminiscences of her recent past pointing out apparently unimportant details”.

Edoardo di Mauro
Presentation to the show Moving Back, 2005

“The train goes, but we are still. Our minds may wander, looking out of the window
or focusing on ourselves stimulated by the colorful shadows passing fast in front of our eyes and helping us to recall fleeting moments.
In this show Silvia Fubini suggests what a train can tell: the ride, the impatience, the anxiety to arrive at a destination, but also the pauses, the instinct to stop what is running too fast, the desire to make our thoughts travel to rest at the final station. And her pastel colors interposed among the big dark shapes of wagons and locomotives remind us of passing images and memories kept in the windows of these gigantic machines, of how much of us is in them and how much of them is in us”.

Valter Giuliano, Department of Culture, Environment Protection, Province of Turin
From the catalogue: “Si Viaggia”, 2004

 

LE PIANTE DELLA FERROVIA Per quale ragione, Altrove ma sempre lontano Riflesso sul finestrino del treno Che scorre con i paesi oltre Me stesso al di qua del mondo Non scelsi anch’io di sospendermi O lago che da te ti stacchi E sei appena la tua trasparenza E voi sempre davanti piante Che a vicenda la corsa eterna In un solo verde e il fischio Non distoglie a fianco del binario Tra i sassi e il precipizio Aggrappate per le radici Agli interstizi della terra Ma indietro protese e ferme Verso il turchino di Baveno Di Verbania, sempre più lievi, D’aria?

Nicola Gardini, from “Atlas”, Crocetti, Milano, 1997
From the catalogue “Si Viaggia”, 2004
www.nicolagardini.com

“In these images by Silvia Fubini the facade becomes ‘persona’ in the Latin meaning of the word, a true mask generating and hiding at the same time a new essence, an entity appearing in front of my eyes through an osmotic process. That young girl, still beating with life, is superimposed on the Selinunte Greek temple and becomes the soul of it. The two images blend so perfectly that it is impossible to draw clear lines between them. Where does the temple begin, where the human being?”

Leila Mebert,
America Oggi, 2002