Arrivederci
For over a month I traveled through Sardinia, exploring its towns and villages to learn more about one of the oldest traditions on the island and in the Mediterranean basin: textiles. I visited over twenty artisan textile workshops, meeting with stylists, craftspeople, dyers, friends, and friends of friends. These visits were invaluable to gain a deeper grasp of the subject I am investigating: warp and weft, which I see as a metaphor for life itself. Over the course of my trip, about a hundred textiles were donated to me. [...] Back in the studio, I sewed together these fabrics and their stories, creating a monumental tapestry that is dedicated not just to the people I met, but to the Island as a whole. The story that follows is my personal travel diary […]; it is meant to give a face and a past to each fabric I collected or that was given to me. Without this story, the works in the exhibition would be incomplete, and the pieces from which they are composed would have no voice. (E.F.)
This book accompanies the artist’s double solo show at MAN (Nuoro) and Villa Croce (Genoa), which took place in 2016 and was curated by Chiara Vecchiarelli, author of one of the texts included in the publication together with those by Ilaria Bonacossa, Lorenzo Giusti, Antonio Marras, and Ettore Favini.
Ettore Favini was born in Cremona, Italy in 1974. His works map the relationship between people and their environment and tend to be site-specific, developed through a process which renders them living organisms: open-ended devices of vision in which the work partakes in life and the viewer becomes an active participant. Awarded the Artegiovane prize from the Milan and Turin Chambers of Commerce (2005) and the Premio New York from Columbia University (2007), Favini was shortlisted for the Castello di Rivoli prize (2009), and shared the 48th Premio Suzzara (2013) with Antonio Rovaldi. He has shown his work, among others, at Museo d’Arte Contemporanea Villa Croce, Genoa; MAN – Museo d’Arte della Provincia di Nuoro; Italian Academy of Columbia University and ISCP, New York; Ocat, Shanghai; SongEun Art Space, Seoul; Centre for Contemporary Art Futura, Prague; Manifesta 9 Parallel Events, Genk; Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin; Villa Panza, Varese; GAM, Galleria d’Arte Moderna and PAC, Milan; MAGA, Gallarate; Santa Maria Maggiore, Bergamo; CCC Strozzina, Florence; Villa Medici, Accademia di Francia, Fondazione Pastificio Cerere, American Academy and Fondazione Olivetti, Rome; Museo Riso, Palermo. He is on the Visual Arts faculty of NABA – Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti in Milan.
