Description
A careful observer of reality and a passionate cinephile, Alessandra Tesi came to the attention of critics in the
1990s, with photographs of uninhabited and inhospitable environments, long corridors, hotel interiors, dilapidated houses and ghostly waiting rooms. In parallel, the artist is interested in video projection and developing projects in which the images, with a strong pictorial impact, vary their effects according to changes in the natural and artificial light, allowing the viewer to physically enter the work. In the installation "Danalis Plexippus", the images of the wings of a butterfly, one immobile and one moving, are projected on the two sides of a glass window. Consistent with the themes of migration and multiculturalism proposed in the first edition of the Premio per la giovane arte italiana (2000), for which the work was displayed, the butterfly symbolizes the journey and adaptation for survival, because its wings are surfaces swollen with air, which use light, or the lack of it, to defend themselves, interpreting the alternation between darkness and day. The artist explores the potential of the screen’s luminosity, creating a type of media on which the projected images, due to the high intensity of light emanating from the video-projectors, are also visible in diffuse ambient light and display remarkable three-dimensional effects.