Il tuo sogno nel mio sogno (Your Dream in My Dream)

Made of cotton fabric, sewn and assembled, Coquelicot Mafille’s drapes resemble processional banners and, like them, declare a very specific affiliation with causes that manifest themselves in images, symbols, and characters of a universal alphabet. They are part of a project that aims to be much more than what it proclaims: “Set sail to somewhere golden,” where unfurled sails are a metaphor for a message that must reach every corner of the world, and the golden place is, in fact, a better place to be in the world. All it would take is a fairer place, a more supportive coexistence, a harmony of purpose with the other inhabitants of the earth—plants and animals—rather than a game of slaughter, as is plain to see for those who wish to see. Yes, a dream, certainly—“Your dream in my dream,” says the Organica exhibition through the complexity of its works, pieces, intentions, and proposals. A circular dream that embraces that round sphere we call Earth, where we—like bees, ants, and bats—follow an existential cycle that is exactly the same, differing only in timing and manner.

“The underlying goal,” states Coquelicot Mafille, “is to shake up and decolonize our thinking so we can act swiftly in the face of the collapse of interconnected ecosystems. Human beings are not the only ones who think, nor are they the only species capable of feeling and perceiving the world.”

They descend from above in wide bands of lightweight fabric and burst into a symphony of color and sound—vibrant, saturated hues that ring out joyfully and seductively in a warm atmosphere inviting us into a labyrinthine journey where the silhouettes of figures sewn onto the canvas depict scenes to be interpreted with ever-increasing alarm. Banners of a secular religiosity, they present themselves as emblems of an open and inviting ceremony, standards of a liturgy for the initiated. The void around them is a space for reflection and meditation.

In fact, they are cartographies of the world—images originating from the Amazon and Siberia, from Afghanistan, Central Africa, or Kazakhstan—conceived by the artist first as drawings on paper, then transferred onto multicolored fabrics that were cut out and applied with needle and thread by someone who has made the practice of embroidery and sewing their own contemporary language. At the center of the composition, human and animal figures, flowers, and words from an “alphabet of the soul” engage in dialogue, while the narrative unfolding before us is gradually revealed: the splendor of form is, in fact, a stark denunciation of the world’s horrors. If you look closely at the female figure holding an animal in her arms, you’ll discover that while she evokes a Virgin and Child, she actually highlights the brutality with which animals are slaughtered for the table. But she can also take on the appearance of a male figure in Afghan attire as he feeds the birds against a backdrop of highly stylized Kazakh dwellings: the correspondence of actions, the immense luminosity of the scene, and the harmony it radiates are moments from a diary of the planet’s days, transfigured into the visual imagination. Each panel tells a story, and each is supported at the base by a frieze where insects or flowers cease to serve a purely decorative function and become immediate, tangible presences. The colored bands of paired tones thus become warning signs to keep in mind.

Born of a dedication to textile art, the alternating strips of contrasting tones are in fact the weaves of refined frameworks that, as in the small-scale acrylics, take on an architecturally structural function while highlighting the light, suspended figures to which the artist draws our attention: like pages of a calendar of memory, they depict experiences in Costa Rica, preserving the intensity of those emotions within the harmonious balance of lush vegetation, gentle animals, and mindful humanity.

Coquelicot Mafille embroiders as if she were painting and paints with the grace of embroidery, the elegance of the warp, and the simplicity of the layout: the result of a perfect syncretism between Fauvist colors and traces of Expressionist influence; these grand compositions are not without pop art evocations and even echoes of Socialist Realism, alongside nods to graffiti and the syntax of storytelling. On the other hand, she has accustomed us to following her embroidered designs on walls or glass as if they were fabric, or to using scissors as pencil tips or fine chisels. Matisse comes to mind, who loved to say of his famous gouaches découpées: “Cutting into the heart of color reminds me of the direct chiseling of sculptors.”

In her paintings, Coquelicot Mafille weaves a close dialogue with words, challenges the viewer’s interpretation, and creates an exciting stimulus for the eyes—one meant to be carried over into the consciousness. Conceived on two levels—background and foreground that attract or repel one another—the verbal compositions are arranged in a precise and unalterable order: within the twelve letters that form them, the grasp of meaning is punctuated by linear breaks that create moments of strain, only to be revived in the conquest of the poetic word. From top to bottom, the letters almost follow a puzzle-like pattern while structuring themselves as solids in space and proclaiming the magic of the word, made up of form and content.

Like Alighiero Boetti’s small tapestries, from which they seem to descend, or the linguistic aggregates of visual poetry with which they share strong ties, Coquelicot Mafille’s verbal compositions—the result of exhaustive iconographic research in libraries across half the world, from which she acquires and reworks the backgrounds that house the word-image—are, in fact, tapestries of meaning that invite rebirth and sharing.

This is also true of the large painting “Renewal of Joy”: conceived as a mythography of a near future yet to come, the canvas is poetic writing woven between a large banner and a cultured illustration, between Renaissance evocations and pop playfulness—in effect, a manifesto of a utopia that is still possible.

Mariolina Cosseddu