Starwatching

Critique sheet

At Spazio CEDAP, for the contemporary art section, an appointment with Starwatching, a new personal exhibition by Valentina Daga curated by Giannella Demuro.

Valentina Daga’s artistic research stems from the urge to explore the body and its possibilities of relating to space, emotions and sensory perception. The work is never just an object, but a living body that meets the spectator’s, in a place that is at once physical, mental, perceptive and environmental.

In recent years, the artist has developed a particular interest in the accessibility of art to the blind and visually impaired, opening up a field of experimentation in which touch and sight meet and contaminate each other. A commitment recognised by the UICI – Italian Union of the Blind and Visually Impaired, which awarded her a special mention, and by the Luxembourg Art Prize 2022, which awarded her a certificate of artistic merit.

The exhibition designed for Organica is entitled ‘Starwatching’, and carries within it a poetic and radical idea: to make the immensity of the universe perceptible through the hands. Celestial maps and constellations become paintings and sculptures to be explored tactilely, engraved surfaces, reliefs and textures that render the depth of cosmic space in concrete signs, accessible to all.

In this project, stargazing – an experience traditionally entrusted exclusively to sight – opens up to an inclusive and multisensory dimension. The artist transcribes fragments of the universe on paper and canvas, transforming the infinitely distant into physical proximity, to be caressed and felt. The creative gesture thus becomes an act of sharing: a new possibility of encounter between art, science and community, where the beauty of the cosmos is revealed in the work’s capacity to be perceived, imagined and internalised by everyone, beyond sensory limits.

Starwatching invites every spectator, sighted or blind, to discover a sky made not only of light but also of matter, not only of distance but also of contact. A sky that affects us all, and which reminds us how art, when it is truly accessible, can become a universal experience.

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