The paddle boat strategy, by Francesca Crisafulli

What happens when you are a little offshore and let your paddle boat drift?
Pulling the oars in the boat, you let yourself be carried along by the current, you lean out into a world where surprises, other life forms, other beings, being other, emerge from the surface of the water.
We know, images, in general, lend themselves well to free associations. But every now and then we must also look for strategies that open up new paths. Photography is in this exhibition a stepping stone, sometimes a pebble, or, at least, it is mostly used as such.

Francesca Crisafulli began a few years ago to photograph forms encountered on the street. With her gaze she wanders the ground and picks up spontaneous drawings that refer only vaguely, openly, to images and objects, which she then reconstructs by referring only to memory, through a declination of automatic but methodical rewriting, far, at least in part, from mimetic reproduction, or what may seem its most direct form.

In the making of the book, commissioned by the Topi Pittori publishing house and still in the final stages of elaboration, a first phase, in which the selection of images involved only the photographs taken by Francesca along her journey, was gradually complemented by a second one, in which the photos were joined by a series of monotypes, collages, works in which different techniques and approaches converge and are built up by overlapping elements and forms.

The layout of this exhibition have the intent to highlight a creative process and compare it with a functional editing for a publication.
Many of the images on display were eventually discarded from the final version of the book, a testament to that “a levare” process essential in a publishing project.
Even more necessary when we navigate the world of children’s books.

Initiative financed with funds from the Lazio Region

The exhibition is part of Bande de Femmes festival.

Bande de femmes, #BDF, band of women, gang of women, but also a language game with Bande dessinée (the French term for illustrated comic strips) is a comics and illustration festival starting with women artists, illustrators and cartoonists organized by the Tuba Feminist Bookstore. And it is above all an opportunity for debates, for the circulation of art, books, and ideas.

The festival is curated by Sarah Di Nella, Ginevra Cassetta, Marta Capesciotti.

The project, promoted by Roma Culture, is a winner of the public notice Estate Romana 2020-2021-2022 curated by the Department of Cultural Activities and is carried out in collaboration with SIAE.