Pepita, the Maid of the New Millennium

Pepita, the anti-Barbie, one large, wide-open eye and one very small. The first one is the master eye, its tireless attempt to see beyond. The smaller eye, the real, the tangible. When, in a character, reason and vision find an equilibrium, they become really very strong.

Her adventures develop in broad sequences, frequently associated with mythology or with history, while at the same time being perfectly contemporary.Only later do they become scripts.  She therefore draws on the iconography of the past, updating it in relation to the themes she tackles. Pepita experiences everything passionately and loves immersing herself in iconic characters and situations recognisable by the collective imagination. Pepita, with her multi-faceted personality, is a particular admirer of Joan of Arc and the spirit of the ancient knights.

This work by Iaia Filiberti is a fairy game, populated with bright colors, magical labyrinths and mythological figures.

And here is a kind of wunderkammer, where the deep walls of the frames imprison the gaze inside an imaginary room, where the eye focuses and loses itself in the artistic image. Thus we are captured, as when as children, looking inside a stereoscope, we seemed to become part of the enlarged frame that flowed before our eyes.

Arianna e Teseo is a beautiful metaphor: Iaia is Arianna herself who with her thread guides Teseo, that is, the audience, through the labyrinth of her images and memories. A vegetable labyrinth, that is, an ancient and universal structure that returns in multiple cultures, a symbol of challenge, risk and mystery. Iaia does not abandon us, but takes us by the hand, delving into its secrets, but at the same time leaving us free to discover and walk the paths we most desire. This exquisitely personal little universe belongs to nature: it is Iaia's variegated garden above Stresa, on Lake Maggiore, a place of the heart for her, transfigured by her creative skill. Here then are the details of trees against chewing-gum pink skies; dense woods, a symbol of our irrational component, often against sunsets lowered into a fairy-tale dimension; strong and lush branches, psychedelic details, given by the strength of the chromatics and the cut of the framing.

Others open up to white and light: more tragic, they are sometimes traversed by a dense network of branches that seem to communicate with each other and reflect each other like blood vessels and neural networks; sometimes, however, the scenery becomes even cleaner and more minimal, leaving more space for the great white sky.