PATCHWORK CITY

Patchwork city, referring to the theme already introduced with the ‘clothes’ (Evening wear, 1996 and Evening wear, 1997) created with plastic bags that are daily used for shopping or to collect the garbage, becomes a metaphor of a story.
Fabula and plot, the weft and the warp play together and run after each other creating a multicoloured net of relationships in which each filament is a teller of tales, of common gestures, of encounters, of dreams.
The female universe observed in ‘clothing’, synthetically mixes together reality and desires from the home circle to that of fashion, here becomes one of  the many stories that flow into a much ampler story devoted to the city.
The urban network, developed through the use of wowen threads cut from plastic bags, knotted and woven with a crotchet hook , recalls and reminds us of the ancient tales and stories narrated by women  while they sat knitting.
The threads interweave creating, along the river, an orthogonal planning of the roads and a network that unites the houses: these are "cubotti", white tetrapak cubes of various dimensions that suggest the idea of cold and anonymous buildings.
Seen from above this work seems a great lace cloth or a blanket that covers,  protects and  warms, but the use of white opaque  tetrapak, so different from the glimmering and seductive materials used by Enrica, recalls the purity of the ideal cities of the Renaissance.
Patchwork city is also a reflection and a study of the urban systems and their relationships with the territory: in fact there are various versions of Patchwork city each of which shows different urban solutions, i.e.  a city rising along the river, a city in the countryside and a city with an orthogonal plan.
A link is  also  present with the invisible cities described by Italo Calvino, particularly the city of Leonia. The opulence of Leonia is measured by the things that are thrown every day away to make room  for the new ones, thus creating a mountain of debris ready to crumble upon the city.
As in many other works, the project for the development of this work was carried out as a great collective job in progress in which the artist’s idea was to involve, before and during the exhibition “Le trame of Penelope: Enrica Borghi, Alice Cattaneo, Name Diffusion, Works and workshop, (Civic Gallery of Modern art of Gallarate, November 10 th 2007. 10 February 2008)” children, teenagers and individual visitors. At the beginning of the exhibition the work was only a sketching of the artist, which appeared as a sort of archetype ready to come to life, take form and meaning in time and in space thanks to the dedication  of everyone. A work that stimulates an exchange of ideas, relationships and storytelling that through the interwoven threads becomes a network of ideas, thoughts and gestures.

Traduzione di  Nicole Bagattini, Stefano Cavallari. Marco Filomena, Rachele Magnaghi. I.S. Gadda - Rosselli, Gallarate.