Opened in Italy (Bossolasco, Piedmont) in the summer of 2021, the exhibition “El abrazo. La excepción de un gesto” (“The embrace. The exception of a gesture”), curated by Paola Travaglio, shows works by more than 40 artists from Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom, the Czech Republic, Mozambique, Cuba and the United States who explore the act of hugging in their paintings, illustrations, sculptures, photographs, installations and video performances.
Multiple techniques, materials, styles and cultures that join in a global embrace, providing a space for encounter and reflection on how the ways of relating to and communicating with others have changed, in these peculiar times in which even a hug, a spontaneous gesture that used to be common in everyday life, has become an exception. This plurality is brought together in order to exorcise isolation and offer some hope of rebirth.
“We embrace each other to feel complete,” Alda Merini wrote – and that is the intention, hope and synthesis of this exhibition.
