Green, dark_Silvia Mariotti

Alone I have the night as friend.

With her I can forever pass

Instant to instant, hours not vain

But time to which my pulse beats as

I would, never distracted.

Thus when I feel,

As once again it leaves the shadows,

The hope, immutable

In me, that flame dislodges newly,

Restoring in the silence

To your earthly gestures,

So loved they seemed immortal,

Light.

                                        Secret of the poet

                                                         by G. Ungaretti^[1]

Nature and its archaic existence have always been at the center of my artistic research. The fascination for the extraordinary beauty of such power conceals stories in which it is a constant witness, tirelessly leading me to investigate it. The images, suggestions and lived experiences, narrated through ambivalent visions, mainly nocturnal or crepuscular, generate a sort of temporal suspension that simultaneously projects towards futuristic scenarios.

Green, dark. is a story within a story, a parallel vision that has remained hidden or marginalized, of a long journey which began in Brazil and ended in Italy with the completion of the book De uma estrela à outra.

My research in Brazil started in 2016: it was the first long period I spent overseas and it marked the beginning of a search for identity through memories, experiences, discoveries and encounters. Initially, my attention was focused on the city, that vast metropolis that is impossible to ignore, and on those who contributed to its growth. Here is where I discovered that a part of Giuseppe Ungaretti’s life, unknown to most, was tied to this large tropical country. Nature, which had always been important to the poet, a great love and the extreme suffering of loss became the themes that accompanied him for the rest of his days.

Subsequently, following the dissolution of the populated areas that engulf the Atlantic shrubland, I decided to venture into the Amazon: the first great destination that, after months in the “Paulista” metropolis, allowed me to understand what I was truly looking for. I was able to deepen the sense of my research, coming closer to poetry and getting to know the people who became the key to my book. Thus, after going back and forth between Italy and Brazil, after bigger and smaller trips within the “país tropical”, I let my experiences be translated, in the book, through the eyes, words and atmospheres of those who, in the past and present, accompanied me in this journey from one star to another. Through the experience of the other I sensed that my feeling could be amplified, through the sharing and acceptance of the other’s gaze I confronted the disorientation that a place so large and dense had generated within me.
For Green, dark. I tapped into my archive in order to give the multitude of images and documents left aside during the making of the book an ‘other’ opportunity, that of narrating through representation a different journey: visitors will be able to peek into this nook of my experience and discover other stories of individuals, vast echoes of the forest, twilight explorations and nocturnal immersions.