“Vital cycles” is the theme of the new exhibition by the artist Ilana Efrati, which will open in Perugia on April 24th at the Domus Pauperum. The exhibition will be visible until May 19th. On display are 12 works like the months of the year: “paintings” that are a synthesis between creativity and the hand of nature. An immersive exhibition that takes you inside the colors and lights of the forest.
Ilana Efrati is an established stylist and in 2005 she opened a studio in Umbria, moving to live in an old farmhouse in the countryside. On display there are raw fabrics that have yet to undergo washing and chemical dyeing before being transformed into clothes. These fabrics from a historic Biella company become canvases on which Efrati places the vegetation she collects in the woods adjacent to her house. She creates an artistic path with nature that was also followed in fashion when the connection with art and craftsmanship was stronger and less with business.
Today the industrial aspect is prevalent, so much so that it is the third source of degradation of water resources and soil. To do some numbers in Europe in 2020 on average nine cubic meters of water, 400 square meters of land and 391 kilograms of raw materials were used to provide clothes and shoes for every EU citizen.
Ilana Efrati’s artistic research, however, places the relationship with nature at the center of her work: producing without consuming resources. “Working on these works is similar to my work in the garden, it starts with some planning and then depends on the conditions of nature,” says Efrati.
The designs of the creations on display correspond with the memories of the “Suzani” cloths whose circular vegetal decorative motifs connect Ilana’s creativity with her mother’s Samarkand origins. “Daily immersion in the forest refines creative ideas. Nature is a wonderful system that does not recognize human boundaries”, explains Ilana Efrati.
