videos of past projects in collaboration with Maurizio Alampi
per un’antologia provvisoria di desideri elevati/ for a provisional anthology of elevated desires
STUDIO STEFANIA MISCETTI is delighted to present per un’antologia provvisoria di desideri elevati (for a provisional anthology of elevated desires),
a solo exhibition by Doris Maninger curated by Veronica He and Pia Lauro.
The show features 38 hot-air balloons made from recycled materials, found objects and natural elements, with each balloon dedicated to a wish.
The project came about in the spring of 2020, as a response to the isolation imposed by the pandemic, when the artist asked friends, family and colleagues to make a wish that could be given a shape, while allowing each individual free reign over their thoughts and aspirations.
This freedom has created a chorus of perspectives made up of very different wishes, but which are bound together by the same strength and determination.
The anthology Doris Maninger has put together is, as its title suggests, provisional, one potentially still in the making – a collection of wishes ironically termed “elevated”, in an allusion both to their noble character and their suspension in mid-air.
The exhibition is rounded off with voice recordings that transform every wish into a sound piece. This part of the project was developed with Maurizio Alampi, who paired every wish with a short poetic text. Decidedly partial, these compositions provide only one of many possible readings.
For a provisional anthology of elevated desires is therefore a collection of the shapes our wishes can take, one in which the coexistence of artistic languages, together with a compositional method based on the circular and choric nature of thought, give life to what we might call an anthology of closeness – a story of the substance of human relationships.
The exhibition opening will also see the launch of the book entitled For a provisional anthology of elevated desires by Doris Maninger, Maurizio Alampi
and Mirza Kahriman, published by CURA.BOOKS and Motto, and distributed from November 25th.
Gioiello/Jewel il figliolino preferito della Gioia
Jewel (Gioiello), the decoration of a body, an action of the heart – OF (de) COR (heart, core) ACTION – The only one necessary, because they (the jewels) preserve the living memory of the felicity of a whole life.
The rings on the hands, in memory of memorable years, of the years in which one swore allegiance to another body, to another life, to an ideal, to a dream.
The bracelets on the wrists to crown your hands, to bless, to indicate well the point where blood and strength flow to your hands, our very personal divinities here on earth.
We have 10 deities at our service, all in the body, the ten fingers. In the Roman religion the Mani (in Latin: Dii Manes) were the souls of the dead. Their name comes from Latin and means Benevolent. They were sometimes identified with the deities of the underworld.
The hands are so important because they are what actually make us human, they are what can hold the light, intelligence, strength, in a single word, the love of the heart flows through the arms into our hands and from there to the Other.
Think about how precious rings are, they bless every finger.
For Africans, every finger has its own character, it’s very distinctive trait. The middle finger is the master of the heart, where the powerful energy of the heart arrives, directly without any side stream.
And then there are the necklaces to celebrate the neck and the throat. The place ‘par excellence’ of our creativity, the cradle of song and word. The cradle of every creation.
Because the Abracadabra of fairy tales, Avrah KaDabra, in Aramaic means I will create as I speak. The prologue of the Gospel of John strongly agrees with the fables, with his “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God”. It is unattainable that the greatest joys and consequently the most beautiful and most widespread jewels are going to honour the throat. Our real cradle?
Then there are the earrings, which are to praise our listening. The words that gained access becoming the fertilisers of our spirit. The words that were generated in our mother, the mother, the living flesh of our body. The thoughts that were pen and penis, bearers of a white seed, of light unbroken, healthy and sound, the thoughts that came to our mind, sexually like a god, thanks to listening to the other.
The earrings celebrate the fertilisation we have granted to our spirit.
And then of course, only for a few, rare but memorable are the crowns.
Those which by right belong only to kings. And rightly so.
Because the crown encircles and embraces the head and if you are not a leader (header), especially of yourself, the crown cannot be manifested.
It is not your ‘joie’ and therefore cannot be your jewel.
And if you were prince, principle of a new circle of life, of a new year in the quadrant of history, of a new anus, in Latin, a new ring (anello), the crown’s sweet and glittering pet name? Maybe then
If you were a prince, within yourself principle of a new beginning and you defended it and made it grow without yielding to the lure of the past, without bending to the status quo, but honouring your Nature in you, natura in Latin the future participle of the verb to be born (nascere) and therefore, literally it means “All that will be born” from now on and always, from here on out forever.? Maybe then
Nature (natura) divinity of the future, not of the past as we always tend to believe.
Divinity of the river that already can see all the streams and brooks that will bring him to entering into the sea but that despite this knowledge will have to live them, will have to discover them step by step on this journey.
That is if you are willing to become river from your source and you are ready to follow all directions then and only then will you become RE King.
The Resh means in Hebrew Chief and simultaneously indicates the direction of a movement which is then discovered to be circular … and then the head, the beginning, will then be discovered to coincide with the end as Jesus well knew when he repeated in the Sermon on the Mountain: Blessed are the Last because they will be the First. And everyone thinks that it was a moral issue, while it was trivially geometric.
The Crown embraces the head the beginning and therefore also the End, the happy ending and encircles the head and from this it is surrounded.
The crown on the head of a human being is the story of a pregnancy. And like a pregnant mother she is filled from the inside. Embraced from within by her man, her son and her daughter, to give birth to them until death will not part them.
Human Beings, are those, in the Cosmos that carry the boundary of creation and light in the palm of the hand, on tiptoe
This is why I wrote that the ring is the most loved and desired jewel
This is why the crowns can only be worn by a few
This is why Indians have jewels that we do not attend. They celebrate the joys of the nose, where the light of creation becomes perfume and the jewels of ankles that become musical instruments Because they know that our steps on earth are in truth the words of our body, of the moving tree that is our body, of the river that we are that flows from the past to the future.
And now I think it’s obvious, even for me, because years ago I wrote that Gioiello is the male pet name of Gioia, her favorite little son. Because really if you don’t have it in your body, buying it and wearing it is just a lie……..
text by Claudia Fabris for the exhibition: Gioiello, il figliolo preferito della Gioia, Studio Stefania Miscetti, rome 5/12/19 -25/01/20
translated at her best by Doris Maninger
A room of one’s own
exhibition during MJW (Munich Jewellery Week 2019)
A room for eight women (seven plus one)
A group of women, seven to be precise – Catalina, Estela, Federica, Flora, Judy, Jimena, Lilian – who work in the field of contemporary jewelry, albeit with very different formal and conceptual choices. Who wanted to share an experience.
Something different from a simple collective exhibition, where at the most one relates individually to the same theme. What they wanted was to deal with the questions posed by Virginia Wolf in the essay A room of ones own, which, in their sumptuous simplicity, still pose questions, as lucid as ever to women in search of their own artistic identity. And – fundamental – they wanted to try to do it together.
To realize this ambition, they asked for the collaboration of another woman, Doris, who, after many years as artist and teacher of contemporary jewellery retains creative freedom moving in variuos artistic directions. A professional and emotional proximity but also a certain distance. An external personality who, thanks to her experience and knowledge of each individual sensibility, was at the same time, with some of her creations, a connection between the parts, a director of space, a curator in the strictest sense of the term.
And this was the way to create a dialogue and amalgamate: to highlight the pieces presented by each of the seven artits through materials – artistic or everyday – which at the same time contained their overall coherence, aesthetics and meaning. Individuality and the collective, how to make them live together: the mother of all utopias, one might say. And yet it was possible, with intelligence and specific attention to what was important to each of them.
That the most recurring elements of the installation were women (small sculptures of women in porcelain) and mirrors has nothing casual.
Women folded in themselves, dreamy, stunned, dialoguing: a small extract of those infinite possibilities, of that vital chaos that makes our mind a vast space of contradictory thoughts, as Virginia highlights in her book To the Lighthouse.
And mirrors: the objects that par excellence give us the opportunity, if we have the will, to put ourselves in front of our own image, in front of the other, in front of change, or the Soul of the World, as some would say. The encounter was therefore between differences that were not avoided but rather enriched, while remaining distinct.
What then is true collaboration. The best form of being together. Who knows, maybe it is from here that we must start again, from even small experiences that, as Richard Sennett says, help and invite everyone to re-learn the ability of collaboration to “repair” our society, as a craftsman does with a damaged tool: useful in the past and potentially even more useful once repaired. For this reason, we can say that the challenge was mastered beyond expectations.
Life stands still here is Virginia’s phrase that makes the sense of how the installation was perceived, by those who exhibited and by those who were “guests” rather than visitors. An exposure of vulnerability and strength. Of reassuring intimacy and courage in telling oneself, humanly (there were signs) and artistically.
An exhibition that was unveiled to those who knew how to read it and give it the time to narrate itself, to those who accepted the invitation to establish contact, to really stay in the room and to live paths and references. An exhibition that maybe has left, more than the precise memory of every single detail, that of a long, surprising emotion. To recall an emotion is the way to remember Poetry, says Edmund de Waal, ceramist and writer, in a recent exhibition.
If it is true, using once again a concept often expressed by Virginia, that all human experiences are fluid, in the process of becoming, then it would be nice to be able to think that also this experience was just one stop in a longer journey.
That deserves to continue. In working together.
jewellery by : Catalina Gibbert, Judy Mc Caigh, Lilian Mattuschka, Federica Sala, Jimena Rios, Flora Vagi, Estela Saez
drawings and sculpture: Doris Maninger
text: Maurizio Alampi
photos: Lilian Mattuschka
dorismaninger 