Jhalak, by Ilaria Magliocchetti Lombi Book presentation and exhibition opening curated by RVM HUB

Jhalak is the Hindi term that we translate as “glimpse”.
Jhalak is just that, a glimpse, that of Ilaria Magliocchetti Lombi, of India, the result of the last of her many trips to that multiform and complex land.

In Jhalak’s India, black and white, the grain and the contrasts, suggest feelings more than telling facts, they almost tactilely express the pastiness of the places, their materiality, the clothes and the skin of the people. Vasco Brondi’s introductory text, translated into English by Livia Franchini, recounts another travel experience in India, a journey that, like Ilaria’s, has nothing to do with the experience of the exotic and much to do with an inner resonance, something pre-existing, that finally finds its place.

Jhalak is a book-not-book, it has the freshness of self-publishing and the design of the volume thought out and structured down to the smallest detail. With its unbound photo-posters held together by an elastic band, Jhalak invites the reader to be an active part of the experience of using the volume. The images, only half shown, interact with each other, suggesting new possible meanings and then reveal themselves in their entirety, once the elastic band is removed and the posters are freed.