Memories of Heaven

When I spoke with my father it was easy to meet the world of astrophysics, and it was just as easy to slip from it to that of theology, passing over the history of man and of human feeling.

Creating an artistic path on such broad and universal themes is not easy. The vastness of the reflections and memories with which I relate has disarmed me several times, and the lack of feedback from the one with whom I interacted until ten years ago was my “thorn in the side” in the preparation of this exhibition.

At first I wanted to talk about everything, and then I realized that I don’t know enough or risk falling into the creation of scientific illustrations similar to those we can find in books. As an artist, I felt the need to “create” with my own head, taking inspiration from the scientific field, but proposing works of art and not theories. It wasn’t always easy.

The path in which you will enter by visiting this exhibition is very varied; it is made up of works created in ten years since the death of my father. There are references to our history, echoes from the past, photographic reworkings, paintings, portraits, researches ... I approached the Mystery and the Void until I realized that the common thread of all the collected material was the recovery and conservation of Memory. I tried to tackle complex issues and astrophysical theories (such as in the works dedicated to the theory of the Multiverses), but always with the intention of wanting to remember and preserve something that specifically could be directly connected to the person of my father, but which in the complex always evoked something “bigger”.

It is now established that we are “Stardust” created, materially, from them. We are made up of particles that are the result of nuclear reactions that took place in primordial stars, which have become supernovae and now “disappeared” from the sky observable with the naked eye from our little Earth. The point is that we have neither tangible nor visual memory of it. However, man has always looked to the sky as the place from which it comes and to which it will return. From prehistoric times to the present day, beliefs and religions have this common feeling. Could this be an indication of an unconscious and primordial memory inherent in us? This too is part of the mystery of our existence. As an artist looking to represent the unrepresentable, I tried to recover in some way what could be a visual memory of the sky that generated us, listening and trying to perceive my “inner sky”, that is, that vague feeling that gives there I come from.

Giulia Calvanese, Milan, 2021