Petra Feriancová

Villae is pleased to present FABVLAE, the solo show by Petra Feriancová (1977 Bratislava, Slovakia) in both the locations of Villa d’Este and Santuario di Ercole Vincitore in Tivoli. The exhibition project has been realised thanks to the Slovak Arts Council support.

In the context of Level 0 - Art Verona, an important occasion for collaboration between museums and contemporary artists, the Villae’s Executive Director Andrea Bruciati looked at the work of the artist Petra Feriancová, represented by the Galleria Gilda Lavia in Rome, with the aim to develop a first time story for the Tivoli’s sites, unpublished in poetry and vocabulary but coherent with these places’ spirit.

Petra Feriancová's analysis about Villa d’Este and Santuario di Ercole Vincitore comes from the observation of the famous engravings by Giovan Battista Piranesi (1720-1778) depicting the Tivoli’s ruins. In these artistic representations, that with pre-romantic sensitivity show the decline of ancient beauty, the artist doesn’t conceive a post-apocalyptic scenarios but images of survival. Looking at the ruins, Petra Feriancová chooses to focus not on the desolation suggested by pets, wandering without their shepherd, or on the uncontrolled vegetation’s growth from the cracks of once vigorous walls, but on the nature's ability of evolution.  The nature's invincibility than individual’s existence. Petra Feriancová leads the visitor to analyze human beliefs, through the observation of fascinating natural phenomena and a mix of natural and anthropic scenarios. Forms, images and vestiges from the past are welcomed in the exhibition’s path with the full awareness that their original meaning has degraded or disintegrated, modifying and filling things with new meanings. This "original" meaning’s alienation produces a new version of the world, which can be shown to people and "socialized"with them as a sort of epiphany, without being totally transposed into a real explanation.