Last week artist Fedilou made her debut exhibition in the downstairs space of Morelli Zorelli, a quaint vegan Italian restaurant in Hove, featuring a collection of intimate sketches, paintings and watercolor works created over a long period of time as a means for the artist’s self-exploration and expression.

‘Dream’ by Felidou

Curated by Silvia Calderoni – a recent MA in Museum Curating graduate – the picturesque space aligned with Fedilou’s vision of appreciating art away from traditional, limiting ‘high-art’ contexts that homogenise the way that we approach art. Silvia’s curatorial take to present this exhibition in a bijou inhabited with a large collection of artworks was a perfect way to showcase the young creative talent from both the curator and the artist.

“Her sketches represent a visual diary of her personal experiences, memories and perceptions, like a tale of her intimate dreams and feelings.”

Silvia Calderoni (curator).

Using the exhibition as a way to present audiences with a self-portrait of herself, artist Fedilou narrates a genuine auto-biographical visual story through drawing and painting that escapes realism. The experience of walking around the space became almost dream-like. With each consecutive work of art, audiences were transported into the pictorial imagination of the emotive Italian artist. Setting an ethereal tone with a vinyl player which filled the room with melodies from Frank Sinatra among others, the space forced audiences to immerse into Fedilou’s personal world.

Inspired by the Dadaist movement, Dancers is a collage piece using newspaper clippings to weave a story of a ballet dancer. Reminiscent of the cut-up techniques described in the Dada Manifesto, Fedilou’s collage work developed into an ultra-femme tale of movement, agency and graceful determination. In this Manifesto, Tristan Tzara writes a series of epigrams one of which resonates in Fedilou’s work: “the poem will resemble you”. Although, the work concerns more with the visual than the poetic, the way in which the artist tells stories in this particular collage technique is a way to again evoke self-expression within her work.

“The aim is not to represent these symbols, it is not the glorification of the form itself, but it is the clarification of a form which says I AM.”

Fedilou

Fedilou creates timeless art that avoids any temporal or spatial attachments. In this way, her artworks become abstractions of memories, ideas and sentiments: tokens of the artist’s past experiences. As curator Silvia rightfully claims, the collection is  “a visual diary of her personal experiences, memories and perceptions”. This exhibition is the culmination of Fedilou’s process of unlocking a once private diary, to present it to the public in an intimate yet liberating show, ultimately allowing audiences to enter her mind through a series of enthralling artworks.

All images credits: Ricardo Reverón Blanco

Categories: Artist Focus Arts

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