Barbara Paganin. Open Memory. 25 jewels. 25 brooches. 25 stories

The exhibition presents jewels and stories that draw their inspiration from the emotions of their past, but which immediately open up to the world too, exploring the memories of others. Tangible elements of a borrowed memory: 19th-century miniatures, porcelain animal good-luck charms depicting mice, hippopotamuses, rabbits, ivory elephants, a little compass, the queen from a chess set… This is the first time the Venetian Barbara Paganin (1961) has chosen to include “extraneous” elements and objets trouvés in a systematic manner in her production. Her work begins with a search among the antiques shops of Venice to find these little objects, which one could imagine were once jealously guarded in some child’s “treasure casket”. The memory of others blends, therefore, with that of the artist herself. Every brooch tells a story, which can be imagined differently by every observer, adapting it to his own memory. The 25 works are planned as a single corpus, on which Paganin has worked continuously over the past two years, and are designed to be displayed all together at Palazzo Fortuny.

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