Secret garden

The Secret Garden project offers an exceptional view of the magical Villa Lante, one of Italy's best-known 16th-century mannerist gardens, voted 'Italy's most beautiful park' in 2011. The fairy tale setting transforms the model into an almost ethereal creature, dialoguing with the space in dresses made by a team of creative designers. As a result, the chromatic and environmental contamination enhances the photographic compositions and the stunning architecture.

The enigmatic and monumental scenarios of the park and the dreamy atmosphere of the photographs realise the timeless magic described by Pablo Neruda: "Everyone has an own fairytale that cannot be read alone. Everyone needs someone who, with wonder and enchantment, can read it and tell it back”.

Shifting identities and archaic hybrids blur the perspectives of both mental and arboreal labyrinth. The labyrinth is the amused checkmate of measuring rationality. Is the contamination between humans and animals. These gardens - such as the Compton House - confuse the oneiric dimension with the deliciousness of romantic aestheticism. Here, the echo of past splendour lives in the opulence of the rooms, transcends the concept of beauty and restores a profoundly romantic scenario. The woman wanders, explores. Her gaze stares towards an elsewhere that only she seems destined to access, losing herself in a maze of emotions, perhaps searching for something, or waiting for someone.

Suspended time catches the observer, leading to a journey of sensory synaesthesia that grows progressively in the climax of the exhibition. As in a playful chase among the perspectives of the Italian garden of Much Ado About Nothing, looking and being looked at are mirrored, before the fairy aura of the fairy model fades into the image itself.

Susi Belianska e Simone Azzoni