On 1 December 2024 at 4 p.m., the photographic exhibition SILENTIUM by Ilaria di Biagio, curated by Claudia Paladini, will be inaugurated in the splendid setting of the ancient washhouse of the Sanctuary of the Madonna della Neve in Palazzuolo sul Senio (FI). The project, conceived by the Cooperativa di Comunità La CIA, was realised with the contribution of the Fondazione CR Firenze, in collaboration with the associations Palazzuolo per le Arti and Foglia Tonda, and with the patronage of the Municipality of Palazzuolo. The exhibition is the result of a residency of the photographer with the nuns of the Quadalto Convent, which boasts a 279-year history and is now one of the few convents inhabited all year round in the Apennines. ‘The project,’ explains Giada Pieri, creator of the project and president of the cooperative, ’investigates a form of resistance in the Apennines, namely living in silence. During the residency, the photographer investigated both the change in the spirituality of these places, and silence, in a dichotomous research between outside and inside, documenting how all these silences can still speak to contemporary man’.
The philosopher Heidegger theorised almost 100 years ago that ‘man, caught up in the use of new technologies, would reach the point of giving up freedom’. ‘Living a week together with the nuns of the Sanctuary of Our Lady of the Snows made me perceive how much our freedom is contaminated by this time of noise,’ explains professional photographer Ilaria Di Biagio. ’Noise of combustion engines, media, digital, noise of a restlessness of living that accompanies us from waking to sleep. During the seven days in the intricate corridors of the convent, it seemed to me to return to a time when this noise did not exist, to an essential life in which ‘silence is a homage that the word pays to the spirit’ (Lavelle, 1942)
The exhibition will be open until 6 January 2025 on the following days 8.15.22.29 December from 2.30 to 4.30 pm.
On other days and in January by appointment only +39 347 8680162
