13.06. — 28.07.2024

Sand Storms in Medio Mundi is aeries of handwoven tapestries that has evolved over time, drawing on experiences from previous travels of the artist (from the Gobi steppes in Mongolia to the desert dunes in Egypt, Azerbaijan, Arab Emirates), as well as literary and philosophical influences.

A work that required the slowness of the laborious, drawn-out process of weaving, which the artist approached as a self-taught artist before surrounding herself with a community of expert weavers and restorers who taught her the tapestry technique. Lisa Batacchi was fascinated by the historic textile artifacts that attest to the exchanges and contaminations of cultures and traditions on the Silk Road routes, so she chose to devote herself to hand weaving, developing a series of tapestries in dominating ochre, the color of sand in the desert.

SAND STORMS

The storms mentioned in the title, in addition to being natural cataclysms that have buried temples, monasteries, minarets, and entire civilizations along these trajectories that have ploughed through Eurasia for more than a millennium, are also a call for a "storm of the spirit" that can generate new arrangements in a world devastated by wars, climate change, massive globalization, and the prevarication of humankind over other species.

The artist's depiction of a sandstorm draws inspiration from the shapes of the medallions that occupy the center of Persian carpets, concentric and symmetrical figures envisaged as windows leading onto another, otherworldly realm. The tapestries inscribed within these medallions contain symbolic motifs and references to spirituality rooted in ancient religions like Zoroastrianism.

BETWEEN EARTH AND SKY

Lisa Batacchi's research is characterized by a spiritual tension, which has led her to investigate the subtle forces and connections between earth and sky. It is that intermediate world between the sensible and the intelligible that Henry Corbin, a philosopher and Orientalist who inspired the artist, describes as a middle ground to be explored with the power of creative imagination.