Silvia Ianfranco exhibition at Museo di Scienze Naturali shows the intensity of the fruitful relationship among nature, science and art. A space to connect and reflect around the still unexplored sides of the artist and the museum, approaching art and nature with respect. Since the beginning the artist research explores the dimension of an intimate memory, intended as a re-emerging from the deep sensoriality awakened by the encounter with nature, as well as the dimension of experimentation. The latter translates into artworks, of both large and small size, full of metamorphic potential, a narrative and imaginative core that each visitor will personally interpret. These premises lead to an accurate dialogue with the institution hosting the exhibition, Museo di Scienze Naturali of Brescia: a place of research and conservation of the natural heritage populating our environment, a guardian constantly experimenting with the botanical, animal and mineral patrimony that surrounds us; a museum where nature in all its forms brings into question the simple act of naming and analyzing. A museum as a laboratory, where Silvia Infranco, led by expert researchers and curators, selected some exempla of this extraordinary city institution, in order to expose them together with her works: ancient and modern herbariums telling us about our vegetable mothers and sisters, the result of a continuous research carried out interacting with nature. From this union was born an exhibition showing the most recognized series of the artist, characterized by slow and rigorous manual sampling, collection, stratification and processing of organic materials originated from plants and minerals.
The exhibition is also complemented by some laboratory activities that aim to involve the public in a path of educational experience, through the observation of artworks designed after a close comparison with the objects displayed and preserved by the museum, and after a careful comparison with the working methods that animate and lead the institution itself. For all these considerations In divenire is an exhibition able of connecting different elements and languages, structuring itself by building ongoing networks of cultural, social and educational relations and opportunities, thanks to an open and authentic dialogue between materials, subjects for and with the community; an exhibition able to address both the experts and a wider audience because of a clear and accurate educational apparatus. The organic elements that make up Infranco’s Metaforme and Melìe, these are the titles of the main types of artworks exhibited, give back a feeling of being in a suspended garden, a garden that the artist reveals to our gaze asking us to tiptoe, inhabiting it with gentleness and wonder. Artworks dialoguing with manuscripts, ancient and modern herbariums, natural elements as well as with the visitors, through renewed looks, gestures and experiences. The captions, the guided tours and the workshops are proposed to the public as further moments of attention and as tools of knowledge, experience, human, cultural and civil growth. The installation that branches out in the center of the room is actually addressed to a public intended as a careful observer in the making: within the laboratory experience, each visitor is asked to complete, transform and enrich a texture of reused materials, patiently sewn by the artist. The exhibition is therefore presented as an innovative format, which has value in itself and which at the same time aims to develop new ideas, experimental projects and paths on the creative, educational-scientific and participatory level, testimony of a Museo di Scienze Naturali that is evolving as well: in its identity features, in its specific and multifaceted cultural offer, both in the city and in the territorial dimension.
