SILVIA MARGARIA #17

AL
I quote the title of one of your exhibitions, “Nature does not like to hide,” to ask you what nature is for you and how your research explores such an ambiguous and important concept at the same time.

SM
The title of the exhibition – a solo show in 2021 at the Cubo space in Bologna – refers to a passage from Heraclitus, Physis kryptesthai philei i.e., “nature loves to hide,” and to philosopher Giorgio Colli’s reinterpretation of the fragment in his eponymous text written in ’48. Compared to the original quotation, however, the title of the exhibition adds an extra element, a “not” belted in brackets to give the possibility of negating the statement itself and overturning the meaning of the sentence in the face of what is not an intentional misunderstanding, but the intention to give another point of view to the mystery on which nature is founded; the birth of all mythology, religion, philosophy, science, in a word of all knowledge, constitutes the titanic enterprise of trying to unveil it.
Building on the theory of the “struggle of contraries” and the concept of “harmony,” Heraclitus formulated a new theory to demonstrate what keeps the world going, and the reason why it does not succumb in the face of struggle, contrast and chaos. The answer is that the many and continuous changes that occur in the world happen according to certain ratios or proportions, what at first glance seems to us to be struggle and contrast, instead hides a profound harmony; by keeping within those ratios, the world keeps going in a continuous “process” for which change is essential. Nature repeats itself while always being new because nature is born and reborn. It is sometimes mysterium tremendum and sometimes mysterium fascinans. It is perhaps necessary to approach Orpheus, the poet who moved stones with the beauty of his song, a symbol of the contemplation of the world, which reveals its own secrets from itself to understand that it is the elusive, unexpected and precarious things of life that give it meaning.

AL
Tell me how your work Dispersion came about and what dimension does it explore?

SM
Dispersion is a work that consists of a series of photographs, evidence of a walk in the Maritime Alps, the Sea Alps, on the path leading to the Marguareis peak. Walking is one of the founding aspects of Dispersion. Whoever walks in the mountains wants to get away from the carelessness of everyday life, seeks another rhythm, seeks solitude; walking is an activity to distance oneself, to be able to have a vision of the proportions of things. But it was not an escape, that of Dispersion. Rather, it was an attempt to re-establish a dialogue. The found epistles that are part of the work and that I read aloud during the climb to the summit are handwritten by senders unknown to me, dated 1916, 1944, post 1946, 1959, 1968. These writings represent a way for me to initiate a symbolic dialogue with the resisting things whose dispersal may be determined by chance or intention.
The project thus opens to a reflection on the relationship between solitude and communication, on the critical balance of restlessness and stability, on the connection with fragility, error and risk, and on the meaning of value and preservation.
“When you go venturing out, leave some trace of your passage, which will guide you when you return: a stone placed on top of another, some grass bent by a blow from a stick. But if you come to an insuperable and dangerous point, think that the trace you have left might confuse those who follow you. Therefore, retrace your steps and erase the trace of your passage. This is addressed to anyone who wants to leave traces of their passage in this world. And even without meaning to, you always leave traces. Answer for your traces before your fellow men.” (The Analogous Mountain, René Daumal).

AL
Your words make me think of Henry Thoreau’s account does in Walden. Life in the Woods. His is a kind of voluntary dispersal to escape the American society in which he lives, to spend two years in a cabin on the shores of Walden Lake, a few miles from the small town of Concord, Massachusetts. It is only 1845, and Thoureau already senses that bewilderment that human beings are experiencing, conditioned by sick economic dynamics that generate a sick condition that he personally feels the need to take care of. Mountain, dispersion and resistance are three viscerally linked words. What can the mountain still reveal to us today through this experience of “dispersion”?

SM
The letters that are part of Dispersion initially made me think about the ways of communicating and “talking to each other”; these epistles from strangers from the past confronted me with the fact that loneliness and communication are not always contrary. Thus began the search for Dispersion, looking for the condition of loneliness in the mountains by taking those found letters with me.
The mountain, the most enduring geographical expression with respect to human transience, has always been perceived as a metaphorical and symbolic space; the arrival at the top is a clear triumph over fatigue given also by the fact that geographically there is no other place beyond which to go. The mountain, in its otherness and concreteness, undoubtedly constitutes a privileged position from which to observe the world isolated from society. That is why it has a transformative power. The perception of the mountain I think should be plural and variable, an ongoing relationship, an invitation to resistance, respect and awareness that we are nothing but solitudes meeting each other.