There’s always a moment when you stop and ask yourself where all this comes from. I’m not just talking about your life, the right or wrong choices, but the origin: how we got here, what brought us into the world. It’s a question that resurfaces every time you encounter the theme of motherhood, which is never just a private, biological, domestic matter, but an ancestral force that touches the collective, memory, even myth. At Atipografia, in Arzignano, they’re trying to tell this story with Matermània/Matermanìa, the first stage of a trilogy that aspires to look straight into the heart of human three-dimensionality. Elena Dal Molin and Marco Mioli constructed it as a dialogue among six artists who chose matter (wax, alabaster, clay, metal, paper) as if it were the only way not to betray the gravity of the theme. Because the sacred, after all, is not a category lost in cathedrals, but a subtle fold hidden in everyday gestures, in the act of giving life, of bringing into the world.
AA.VV.,”Matermània/Matermanìa”, installation view at Atipografia, Arzignano (VI), ph. courtesy Atipografia
And here a thought of Simone Weil comes to mind, when she wrote that attention is a rare and purest form of prayer. The works on display have this quality: they are attentive, they care for matter and, through it, force us to slow down, to stay. Gregorio Botta, with his wax frame enclosing alabaster, creates a kind of secular annunciation: no figures, no halos, only the space of gift, of containing and offering. Marta Allegri instead brings childbirth as a universal symbol, the root of every birth, and here you feel the echo of Hannah Arendt, when she says that politics is born with the action of bringing something new into the world. Then there’s Diego Soldà, who worked for years layering colors until achieving Madre, a spiral sculpture that looks like a shell, the form of time turning on itself. Looking at it, you realize that we too are layers, daily repetitions that build something unique.
AA.VV.,”Matermània/Matermanìa”, installation view at Atipografia, Arzignano (VI), ph. courtesy Atipografia
Zeljana Vidovic, with her ceramics, tells instead of the interior metamorphosis of motherhood, while Stefano Mario Zatti chose a ritual gesture: drawing his son’s silhouette at every full moon, an intimate chronicle that becomes cosmic. Mats Bergquist closes the exhibition with his encaustic surfaces, which speak of voids and fullness, of silent presences asking to be heard. It’s as if, ultimately, motherhood were always this: an alternation of empty and full, of space that welcomes and space that lets go. The exhibition’s title comes from the Grotta di Matermania in Capri, dedicated to Cybele, the Magna Mater. Not a detail, but a strong reference: motherhood as creative chaos, as a generative force you cannot contain. Nietzsche would have said that this is where the struggle between Apollonian and Dionysian plays out, between form and chaos. And then you understand that this exhibition is not a reassuring celebration, but a resistance: against a world becoming two-dimensional, erasing the sacred along with superstition, afraid of ecstasy and glory.
AA.VV.,”Matermània/Matermanìa”, installation view at Atipografia, Arzignano (VI), ph. courtesy Atipografia
Walking among the works, you notice that motherhood here is not reduced to a biological function but is narrated as a collective act, as the first political gesture. A way of saying that birth doesn’t belong only to those who experience it, but belongs to everyone: a bond that founds societies, creates cosmogonies, opens possibilities. And when you leave Atipografia, still carrying the smell of wax and clay, you think that perhaps this is exactly the point: to remind ourselves that existence is not an individual fact, that everything we are is interwoven, generation, gift. After all, as Plotinus wrote, «we do not generate for ourselves, but for the totality of the cosmos». And perhaps it’s really true that the first act of resistance, today, is to give birth.
Info:
Matermània/Matermanìa
Artists: Marta Allegri, Mats Bergquist, Gregorio Botta, Diego Soldà, Zeljana Vidovic and Stefano Mario Zatti
Curated by Elena Dal Molin e Marco Mioli
03/10/2025 – 24/01/2026
Atipografia
Piazza Campo Marzio, 26 – Arzignano (VI)
https://www.atipografia.it/
Independent artist and curator. Founder of No Title Gallery in 2011. I observe, study, ask questions, take informations and live in contemporary art, a real stimulus for my research.
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