28 that us, in the West, are afraid of colours, whereas in Africa there is total freedom. These suggestions led to both the video and the digital processing contaminated by painting techniques to which I added resin. Burkina Faso also returned in the works Women InColors, which I exhibited in 2019 at the Domus Art Gallery in Athens. In this new series I was inspired by African models arriving at a new representation of the memories of that journey, this time using only resin and acrylic colours on the canvas. What led you to choose resin, which has become the material to which you have entrusted your expressive style? First there was only painting, then photography on Plexiglas reworked and contaminated with painting. The technique evolved with the addition of canvas painted with the same image under and over the Plexiglas; then painting and resin passed over it and, finally, resin and other materials worked together. I was attracted by the reflected light of Plexiglas and in a way, resin has the same technical characteristics as Plexiglas. In fact, plexiglass is a polymethylmethacrylate, hence a hard resin, while industrial resin is a synthetic polymeric material. For Extra–urbane, I decided to use resin on the reprocessed photograph. I liked the idea of layering resin on top of photographic processing because it recalled the concept of suspension of memory. In that series, I superimposed images of my trip to Africa with images of Rome, my city. Later I experimented with the use of resin on canvases painted with layers of oil colours, as in the works in the two-person exhibition Sei gradi. Un istante (2009), also at Gallery 196, but I soon realised that controlling this material was very difficult. With these works, in 2010, I was invited by the Italian Cultural Institute of Damascus for a solo exhibition at the Aburemmaneh Arab Cultural Centre and to participate in the Art Symposium at the Ma’rat AlNoaman Archaeological Museum in Idlib. Over time I continued to experiment, looking for the resin that best suited my needs: the intuition came when I realised that I could “talk” with the element I was using, supporting it. Letting the resin react on the oil, rather than imposing a forced use on it, could even become a strength. Freeing the stroke, as well as the resin, was a further step that I came to thanks also to a period in which I meditated assiduously. The meditative practice helped me to remain centred and to bring out a part of me through the stroke itself. It is no coincidence that in 2018, the first exhibition after this period of experimentation, I called it Iosepha, which was what my Latin teacher called me in high school. Giuseppina in Latin
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