In her artwork Barbara Crimella seeks to portray the soul as our living mental breathe. This sense of the soul is symbolised by her idea of la piega (the fold).
The pieghe (folds) are a leitmotif in her work that make up a language of the soul, marking its presence in manifold ways and in multiple places. These pieghe are snapshots that reflect the soul’s continual
movement, its flow, as it responds to our inner and outer worlds and variably connects them to each other.
The soul plays hide-and-seek with itself. In this game, the soul is making itself up and trying to suit itself.
Sometimes the soul hides and tries to ignore an experience that it does not want to see, to be. It buries the experience within folds and inside creases where it can be forgotten. Here, the piega folds inwards, closes up.
Other times the soul seeks to hold on to an experience, to keep it, to accentuate it. The piega then unfolds, opens out, to reveal, remould the experience and make it more prominent, more apparent and accessible. Hence, this experience can be remembered.
In this way, Crimella uses la piega as a symbol of the soul, and her pieghe are her leitmotif of the soul’s duplicity.
The pieghe represent moments within the continual flow, energy, of the soul: its current of action and reaction as it determines what to remember and how to forget.
Consequently, the pieghe share a common feature: they fold and unfold, ignore and reveal. In this way the pieghe reflect the moving emotion of the soul.
Now then. How is the soul motivated? What steers the soul inward or outward? What gives the soul its sense of direction, its purpose? What are the spurs that determine the souls changes, its moods?
In this context, Crimella explores our connectedness within ourselves, between our inner and outer states. And our connectedness with our other, our environment – here, Crimella sees nature as our secure haven and home.
For Crimella nature is our ultimate reference, the ultimate place where truth is beauty. Here we can find and attain a state of “exalted communion”, of lucid harmony. In this state of heightened awareness we are able to contemplate, recuperate, our sense of being – our soul.
This sense of being is about connecting our inner and outside states: to be our eloquent selves.
And it is about connecting to nature, seeing ourselves as part of nature’s breathe, of nature’s equilibrium and generous order.
Crimella calls this space of “secluded silence” SUSPENDED TIME.
Georgina Turner