HElena Valsecchi

When the Covid pandemic broke out, my life, like that of many, changed dramatically.

I stopped having access to the studio space I had in Lisbon, so I had to reinvent myself a workspace, adapting the place, on Portugal’s west coast, where I had been living for a very short time. My days became much more solitary and meditative, but also much more in contact with nature. For a few weeks I was unable to make art, nor music, I needed to understand what sense the act of making art could have, and what art could do for man in such a moment.

I have been living in Portugal for 13 years now, my family of origin lives in Italy. Suddenly I found myself unable to reach them due to all the limitations of the moment, at a time when it would have been very necessary for various family reasons. The area where my family lives was the most heavily affected by the virus in early times of the pandemic in Europe.

The forced loneliness in which I found myself was painful, but at the same time a precious time to find a new meaning in my work, and to understand even more how important the relationship and exchange between human beings was, also and above all in artistic creation.

From this moment on, I had the opportunity to collaborate in a project of art residencies in Portugal, and my work has progressively centered on the search for a profound meaning of the existence of man in the world, which in my view is found in connections between beings and among humans and nature. My way of working has clearly taken this direction, and has opened up to a greater breadth, having created the awareness of the need for an art that includes and connects everything.

“Synecdoche“ was originated by the feeling of a connection between two apparently distant but actually very close universes. That same feeling of connection ends up being the very essence and content of the project.

The project involves an artistic reflection on the manifestations of sacred. The feeling of the sacred makes us feel part of something greater, it is a constant in the history of humanity. It has acquired and acquires multiple forms depending on the historical moment, culture and individual, and by doing so it has been connecting apparently different and far realities. In this artwork, I have been creating conceptual and formal connections, maintaining its unity in its fragmentation.

“Synecdoche” is at the same time complete and incomplete, made up of various interdependent but at the same time independent single artworks, destined to spread through different destinations, therefore devoted to fragmentation, but at the same time able to maintain its unity, guaranteed by the “virtual” existence of the artwork on its website. It’s a work in progress watercolor panel, programmatically neither finished nor terminable, expanding in space, time and geography. In this time of social isolation, the artwork has evolved towards a will of creating human connections, in response to a need to go beyond the physical boundaries of which we are and feel prisoners in this historical moment.

It appeals to the ability, proper to the human being, to overcome these limits and to create and strengthen bonds beyond distance and beyond time. The diffusion of the artwork is part of the artwork itself, to be shared in a broader relational context: each participant will become part of the artwork.

“Synecdoche” thus becomes a collective artwork, beyond any geographical, social or temporal limit. https://elenavalsecchi.com/synecdoche-nov-2020/