I have a dream

Farsi “ospiti” di uno spazio che si è autodefinito per aprire i propri confini.

Gabriella Valera

Make yourself “guests” of a space that has defined itself to open its borders.

Gabriella Valera

“I have a dream”

Photographic exhibition of the shots sent by the poets of the International Poetry and Theatre Competition “Castello di Duino” XV edition

commented with their own verses.

Curated by GabriellaValera

It is the word that awaits the image, it is the image that awaits the word.

The substance of the dream hovers and extends between the vision and its realization in the space created by poetry, space / time in which the author, the “visitor” is housed, we would almost say the “guest” including in this word both the reader of a text, and the listener of its performance, and the observer of the image shown or represented.

From this premise (a moment of reflection on what we enjoy when we set up an exhibition, present it or visit it) we can start to understand to enjoy this exhibition dedicated to dreams and knowledge.

What is a dream? the authors of the photos must have asked. And also what is my dream.

The result are shots that accompanied by the words of their authors tell us hopes, thoughts, memories, something very intense and personal which, however, can be rekindled in the gaze of others in a very special dialogue.

We start with two photos that we could put under the title “Heritage”: a dream, that of being able to continue a legacy of smile and strength in a world that has a lot of negative, and the gaze of a young woman, intense, penetrating; and on the other side, an absent gaze replaced by a mask, a man from behind: a nightmare and, in the words that accompany the photo, a father who takes away from his son the illusion of heaven.

Playing with infinity could be the title of another section consisting of photos 3, 4 and 5. Play of light, which make you imagine spaces, metaphysical landscapes, mirages, and subjects that move looking up to the sky, and far away , imagining races of standard-bearers, towers and queens between wind and sun.

A third emotional and figural nucleus refers to the dream that plays (or compares) with reality (it is photographs 6-9). In the photo with the teddy bear, as I like to indicate it, there is the lost, sad almost, or rather, pensive look of this creature, living  in the lens capable of saying regret and hope, while the verses recall the time of happiness and waltzer. “In the cradle of peace” the dream plays with the reality of a landscape gathered in its correspondences, between lines and lights. In the next photo, the little girl who walks the streets of a model of a city with her little hand seems to invite to accompany  in this game which is also the game of life that seeks and takes paths in large and often unknown spaces (but in the photo the game is just to see the whole and smile). In photo 9 a monument of tangled bodies becomes history in the mind of the observer to find comfort in the poetry that invites to forget the chaos to remember a mythical time of youth and its strength.

Finally, a small series of photos could be placed under the title “Children of one land” 10-14.

Here is the simplicity of the dream that becomes the center of a smile. The colors of a beautiful open peacock tail (the photo with which this section of the exhibition ends, are actually in the text that accompanies the image) open wings and May flowers. This is a dream of beauty: wide landscapes bring back to the simple but difficult dream of asking for nothing but joy, friendship, adventure and above all, as the poppy suggests in the middle of a sunny meadow, to be “children of the same land”.

It was interesting for the curator of the exhibition to note that the themes and almost the “figures” that found themselves in an exhibition that had the title “I have a dream”, are present in many of the photographs (about 300) that in these years have been sent by young poets from all over the world. For this reason it was decided to exhibit some images in retrospect: “Heritage” “Playing with the infinite” between reality and vision, between pain and hope, between nightmare and beauty, or that being children of a land and a universe that cannot abandon.

The “dream and knowledge” is titled the exhibition, because the figural value of the images captured by the shot brings the viewer in a dimension to be explored, invites to collect the echo of colors and lines, to read the verses without linguistic preconceptions: invites in other words to become “guest” of a space that has defined itself to open its borders.

The exhibition has been exhibited in Trieste, Sala Giubileo, Via Mazzini 4 from 20 to 31 March. We thank the Greek-Eastern Community of Trieste for hosting it and the Hellenic Foundation of Culture-Italy for their collaboration.