Kimchi - Outsider's Gaze

Kimchi is a photo-exhibition on South Korea by Nadia Bagattin, which was held recently at Palazzo Toaldi Capra in Schio (Italy). The wide success of K-Pop, as well as, that of their TV serials, has created an international image and interest in South Korea. Nadia Bagattin's pictures in the Kimchi exhibition go behind that international image to look at the society, focusing especially on the contrasts between traditions and modernity.

I always find it interesting to understand how the outsiders look at countries and cultures, compared to the insiders. However, I have never been to S. Korea and I am not much informed about it, so to complete this exercise I should also look at works of some Korean photographers.

You can click on all the images in this write-up for a bigger view.

A Brief Talk with Nadia Bagattin About Kimchi Photo-Exhibition

While visiting the exhibition, I had a brief talk with Nadia Bagattin about her pictures in this exhibition, which is presented here.

Q:  You are a photographer for passion or professionally?

Nadia: For passion. I have studied multi-medial art at the Art Academy. I have been passionate about photography ever since I was a child and was gifted a camera.

Q: These days everyone clicks pictures everywhere, what is the meaning of being a photographer for you?

Nadia: My professor used to say that photographers are like painters, they paint with the light, to capture a moment, or an emotion. Everyone approaches it with their own ideas, so every photograph has a right to exist. Thus it does not matter, how many other pictures exist, for me it is a way to share my emotions from that moment.

Q: When you click pictures, what interests you more?

Nadia: I like to photograph persons, sometimes I am a very slow photographer. For example, if I arrive in a park, I would just sit there and look around for a long time, till there is something which strikes me emotionally and only then I click its picture.

Q: This was your third journey to South Korea. When you look back, was there anything different this time in terms of your photography, compared to your earlier visits?

Nadia: It was a very different expereince The first time, I had gone very casually as a tourist, to meet some friends who had invited me. I didn't have any specific expectations. I used to listen to South Korean music and watch films and I had a vague idea of what I was going to find there. Later, I became passionate about it, I studied its history, now I have a better idea of its people and culture.

The first exhibition I had about S. Korea was last year, it had a more of a tourist kind of pictures - beautiful places that looked like picture postcards so that persons could feel attracted to visit the country. 

This exhibition is more visceral, I wanted to discover both sides, good and ugly of Korea. Like every country, it also has both, and I love them both.

Q: There are some pictures in the exhibition that look at the traditions, at dresses, at religious iconography and rituals. There are others that look at city life, such as the images of plastic toys in different colours.

Nadia: Yes, that is the aim of this exhibition, it is about contrasts, the two sides of the coin. Thus there is "pali-pali" (Korean way of saying "hurry up") side of Korean culture, as well as, the more traditional meditative side linked to zen, respectful of the nature and culture. So if you have noted these two sides, this is exactly what I wanted to achieve.

Q: If you could choose three pictures from this exhibition, which represent a significant moment for you, which pictures would you select?

Nadia: Let me think.

The first picture that I would choose would be one of these children. It is from a city where they had few tourists. They were very surprised to see me in their city. They said "Hello" to me to show that they knew English.

The second can be the two elderly persons and their boat (left). They were retired persons and were doing volunteer work to clean the algae from this lake. When I was clicking this picture, the man became aware and he told me that both of them were very old but were still strong and active. I like these interactions with people.

The third would be that of the man making an offering to the turtle statue. The elderly man is making this offering underneath the turtle which represents the eternal life, it was his prayer for a long life.

Conclusions

So what does the choice of her three favourite images from the exhibition tells us about her as a photographer? I think that it denotes her attention and preference towards human-interaction. 

I love talking to artists and photographers to understand what motivates them to create. My exchange with Nadia Bagattin was short and yet interesting. You can also see some of her other pictures on her Instagram page.

I was struck by her description of photography as a painting with light. I had a somewhat similar idea when I had called my old photo-blog as "Chaya-Chitrakar" - the painter of shadows.

Kimchi exhibition can be visited at Palazzo Toaldi Capra in Schio till Sunday 27 July 2025.

   

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Martini Art School Exhibition in Schio

Students of Schio's art school A. Martini, organise an annual art exhibition to present their works. This exhibition has hundreds of exhibits. This year I was able to visit it. It was wonderful to see Schio's familiar streets, buildings and monuments in their works.

This first image below is about some of the city streets and has art works by Fatima Sadkaoui, Eva dal Maistro and Giacomo Scarpati. (You can click on all the images in this post for a bigger view)

It is not possible to talk about all the works that I liked in this exhibition, I can only present a small selection of them. Who knows, one day one of these students will be a famous artist! This post is dedicated to all of them.

A. Martini Art School in Schio

The Martini art institute is part of the Tron-Zanella-Martini high schools. It has a 5 years course for art students including 2 years of general study which is common to all the students, followed by 3 years of specialised studies in 2 areas - figurative arts and architecture.

Many years ago, this art school had an evening course and I know some local artists who had done that. I wish they would again conduct an evening school or may be have an art course for elderly people - I would also like to join it.

Let me now show you some of the art works from the 2025 exhibition. They are no particular order. All the students in the art school learn about and work with all the different figurative art forms including designing, sketching, painting, graphics, sculpture etc. 

Some Sculptures

Some years ago, I had seen some computer made sculptures from 3D printers. Since they were made of resins, I had mixed feelings about them. I am sure that in future, a mix of CNC and 3D printing will make more human-made kind of sculptures but I am sure that good sculptor will always have a value.

The two sculptures on the sides in the image below are by Tommaso Guadagnin & Anita Peruzzo.

Perspectives

I liked the works using a kind of binocular effect in the drawings to show a different perspective of their subjects. The three works presented below are by Sofia Damoc, Andrea Busato & Angelica Guido.

Ex-Lanificio Conte

This art exhibition was held in SHED hall of the old Conte wool mill (ex-lanificio Conte). There were different art works of this building. The image below presents three of them - all the three have the building as seen from the Conte Square, through the artists' locations and colours are different. It has the art-works of  Alessandra Peron, Elisabeth Salin & Sofia Rapagnani.

City Landmarks

There were many art-works about the city landmarks. The two images below present some of them.

The first one has the Rossi monument and St Anthony church by Benedetta Valente, the civic theatre building by Agnese Gasparella & the Salesian sports' complex by Aurora dal Pezzo.

The second one has the works of different students including the Duomo church in the centre by Mariem Fatou.

Sketches and Graphic Designs

The image below has sketches and graphic designs by different students.

Self Portraits

To conclude this highlights-view of the exhibition here are some of the self-portraits based specific themes like water, air, etc. I liked this idea of the students imagining themselves as mythological or cosplay figures. (You can click on each image for a bigger view).

In Conclusion

It is not easy to be an independent artist and earn a decent living from it. Thus, I think that many of the students will probably end up doing some other day-time work and continue being an artist in their free times and week-ends, till some of them will find success and recognition.

Apart from the challenges of finding work related to art in today's world, I think that in future, in the kind of world that is coming, having a connection with art will be very important for the human experience. Whatever they will do in their lives, hopefully making and appreciating art will continue to enrich them.

So, best of luck to all the art students of Schio graduating this year.

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Exploring Emotional Geographies: Silvio Faggin

My friend Silvio explores and expresses emotions, sensations and feelings through photography. A few years ago, Silvio had a brain-stroke when an artery in his brain was blocked by a blood clot. He was fortunate to survive that experience. During his recovery he discovered a new way of using photography to express himself. (Note: Click on the images for a bigger view)

I was also very much into photography till a few years ago and never went anywhere without my camera. With my work in development programmes in different countries, it was a way of documenting as well as, a way of discovering countries, communities and people.

Silvio goes into photography in a completely different way, searching for emotions and feelings. His images are about capturing moods, lights, sensations, they do not bother about rules and norms of "good" photography.

For example, I love the water-colour painting like effect he can get in some of his images. This post is about Silvio Faggin, his life and his photography.

 

Silvio's Life

Silvio was born in Schio, and his first home was in Via Faccin. His father worked in making wooden furniture and he has a brother, 2 years older to him. While his brother wanted to study, Silvio says that he was not very keen to study and started working after finishing the middle school.

His first job was in a pharmacy but he did not like it and changed it after six months, when he heard about a job with a new company making electric systems. He learned on the new job and grew his skills in this field. Though he changed employers but he continued in this field of electric systems for all his working life.

In the mean time he married Patrizia and they have a son.

During mid-1980s, new design systems were introduced for making the electric systems called Programmable Logic Controller (PLC), which used computers and automation. Soon Silvio also got into PLC and thus started to work with computers. Over the years, this work grew into CNC (Computerized Numerical Control) machines. And thus, Silvio's work with computers also grew.

Silvio has travelled widely for work in a large number of countries, especially in North America and Europe. Apart from Italian, he knows Spanish and French, and over the years, has acquired proficiency in English.

Silvio's Brain Stroke

One evening in January 2018, while in the bathroom, Silvio had a brain-stroke. He was fortunate that his wife heard him and called the ambulance, which arrived quickly and took him to the Neurosurgery department in Vicenza hospital, where the doctors were able to operate and re-open his blocked artery. After about 10 days in ICU, he regained consciousness.

The stroke had caused weakness in right half of his body and loss of speech. After his recovery, he slowly regained strength in the right side of the body. However, recovering his capacity to speak took much longer - he had to work for it with a speech-therapist for about 2 years.

Silvio's Special Experience

At the time of the brain-stroke, while he lay unconscious in the bathroom, Silvio had a special experience. He felt that he had separated from his body and was visiting the eternity in the cosmos - however, these words do not express his experience adequately. He finds it to difficult to express this experience in words. He feels that this experience changed him in profound ways but again finds it difficult to explain how.

Though now he can speak, but often he continues to struggle with finding the words to express himself. Sometimes, he needs to search for the words on his mobile phone. Thus, conversation with him is punctuated with silences.

While we were talking about out-of-body experiences during the stroke, we joked about his famous cousin, Federico Faggin's book Irreducible, which is about connections between consciousness and quantum physics, (which I have just started to read but find it a little challenging to understand).

Silvio's Passion for Photography

Silvio had a camera before his stroke and he used to take pictures with it, like usual photographs. After the stroke, he discovered a new passion for photography, which was different, in the sense that now it is a way for experiencing and expressing emotions.

He explains it with the following words: "When I see something that moves me or touches me in a particular way, I want to express that emotion through my photography. I manipulate the manual settings of my camera, till I can achieve that particular emotion and click a picture. Often that first picture expresses my emotion and my way of seeing the reality."

The way he explains it, it seems that he is not experimenting with different camera settings to see different effects they can produce, but rather, using a particular setting for achieving a precise effect that he can foresee in his mind.

He downloads those images on his computer and on mobile-phone and likes to look at them to experience and re-live those same emotions.

Photography Without Technical Manipulation

A couple of months ago, I went to see a photo-exhibition with Silvio. I was surprised to discover his complete disdain for pictures which are manipulated through the different image-editing programmes. I had imagined that his own pictures were a result of similar manipulations. He was very vehement about it and insisted that he only works with manual settings on his camera and does not like making any changes with image-editing software.

Another time, while talking to him about the countries he liked, he mentioned Spain in the early 1970s, when it had just come out of Franco's dictatorship and still much less-developed. At that time also he said that he liked it because it was "less-frenetic" and more like the life in the old times.

Maybe it is that fondness for simpler lives in pre-technological era, that determines his refusal to use computer to enhance or modify his pictures?

Some years ago, I had written a post about "Zen of Photography", where I had explained how while taking pictures, I feel more isolated and can feel more deeply the things I am photographing. Silvio's experience with photography seems to me like another kind of Zen experience, where he imagines and feels the world in a specific way and then tries to capture that feeling in a picture.

In Conclusion

I feel that some of our intimate experiences are very specific to us and not easy to explain to others. We try to use common words to express them so that others may get a glimpse of what we feel, but it is an almost impossible task. In the end, each one of us is free to interpret and imagine what those words can mean.

There is another thought in my mind. We all need to communicate, because it creates connections between us and others. However, when our ability to communicate in one way is limited, we need to find other ways to express ourselves. So the question I ask myself is - has Silvio's stroke limited his ability to articulate his thoughts in the way he used to do it earlier, and because of it, he has developed a new and different way to feel the world and express himself through photography?

I want to conclude this write-up with an image of a place (above) where Silvio often goes with his dog for long walks. Even I love evening-walks in this part of Schio because I love its gentle hills and the way this area gets illuminated at sunset.

Silvio is a prickly person, easily provoked and he has his specific views about the world, things and life. Occasionally, I like provoking him to hear his indignant "NO!", when he does not agree with my ideas. For example, I wanted to have his picture for this write-up but could not convince him. However, I am glad that he agreed to share about his experiences.

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#photography #creativephotography #silviofaggin #schio #altovincentino #veneto

 

Art Exhibition - Visioni d'Arte

The art exhibition titled Marcopolo Travels - Visioni d'Arte was held at Palazzo Toaldi-Capra in Schio recently. It was curated and organised by Roberto Settin, who represents different artists and organises public exhibitions to sell their works.

This year is the 700th anniversary of the death of Italian merchant-traveller Marco Polo and thus different events have been organised in Italy on the theme of travel and journeys, especially in the Veneto region. It was also the theme of the art-exhibition of Visioni d'Arte.

Roberto Settin and his agency Visioni d'Arte

I had a brief talk with Roberto at the exhibition. He started this agency Visioni d'Arte in Bassano del Grappa during the shut-downs due to the Covid epidemic. He felt that he knew about the artists, the way the art markets work and has the international connections, so he can help artists to have viable strategies for selling their works.

To explain, how he can help artists, he gave the example of understanding the value of the art. He said that sometimes, new artists have unrealistic expectations about the kind of money they can get for their work and he helps them to have more realistic ideas. Often new artists can just manage to cover the cost of their materials and gain a small margin. Having their names and works in an exhibition-catalogue increases the value of their work over time.

To present their art-works in such an event, the artists need to contribute to the costs of organising the exhibition. For an exhibition in a small town like Schio, the costs are much less, compared to exhibitions in big towns like Venice or Milan. At the same time, small towns have lesser visitors and less sales.

Roberto is also an artist. He explained that the orange lion placed outside the exhibition hall was his creation. Roberto can be contacted through his Facebook page.

Art-Works in the Exhibition

The art-works in the exhibition were on different themes and many were not directly about travel, unless we think of travel as flights of fantasy and imagination. I want to briefly mention a few art-works from this exhibition, which I liked.

Let me start with 2 oil paintings using spatula - Rose in black and white by Annalisa Trento and In flight by Bianca Mengotti.

 

Marco Eracli, an artist based in Florence,  had 4 works in the exhibition, using acrylic with mixed techniques, that gives a wonderful texture to his work. Among all of them, I liked most the art-work titled Star-dust. Carlotta Castelletti also used acrylic but she used the wall-paper fabric for her striking work titled Madam.

Antonio Miatto does sculptures and collages. Among his works, I liked his collage titled "The Sea" and the wood-metal sculpture of the fish with a hole, titled "Without a heart". 

I liked the 3 oil-on-canvass paintings - 2 of them by Mara Zanchetta - "Freedom" with its red and black colour scheme and "Hair-curlers" with a feisty looking woman. The third one was "Hathor" by Monia Sansa.

The mixed material work by Cristiano Sandonà, uses some synthetic resin materials mixed with acrylic on glass - his work titled "For You" was simple and evocative. I also liked the mixed material work with wood and other recovered materials titled "Diversity is not the enemy" by Mattia Tegon.

Conclusions

I feel that art is very subjective, even more so, when the artists vary so much in their subjects, techniques and materials. Thus, deciding awards or who is the best, does not make sense to me.

Another aspect is liking some art-work at an intellectual level. It is another thing to decide which art-work I would like in my room, so that I can look at it daily.

From this point of view, I think that I would like the works of 3 women artists on my wall in my room - Bianca Mengotti, Carlotta Castelletti and Monia Sansa. At an intellectual and aesthetic level, I also like the works of Marco Eracli and Mara Zanchetta.

Among the art-works presented here, which ones do you like most? Write in the comments below.

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4th Schio Biennale of Papermade Art 2019-20

The 4th edition of the Schio Biennale focusing on Papermade exhibition is going on at Fogazzaro Palace in Schio. It is a biannual art exhibition on paper art.

This post is about my favourite 15 art works from the 2019-20 Papermade exhibition. 

The Theme of Papermade 2019-20

The theme of 4th edition of Papermade curated by Valeria Bertesina is "Beauty in the non-essential". Art and beauty may be seen as unnecessary, even superfluous, but I feel that art and beauty add life to our lives. Prehistoric humans understood it, when they made cave art, necklaces out of colourful beads and painted figures on earthenware. (Click on the images for a bigger view)

This exhibition started in October 2019 and will finish on 9 February 2020 (Note: it has been extended till 13 April 2020). It includes two special events - (1) a series of "sculptures" by Joseph Rossi which re-interpret some iconic & provocative works of the well-known Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan, and (2) a mini- exhibition of 15 artists from Finland. The image above presents "Him" by Joseph Rossi, which was a re-interpretation of the Maurizio Cattelan sculpture (2001) of a school boy with the face of Hitler kneeling in prayer.

Re-Interpreting Maurizio Cattelan

Joseph Rossi is a graphic artist based in the nearby Thiene. This edition of Papermade is hosting few of his installations, including some which are a homage to the iconic works of Maurizio Cattelan.

Cattelan, a famous artist based in Padova (Padua), has been in the news recently because of his provocative work of "art" which had a banana fixed to the wall with a duct-tape in the "Art Basel" exhibition in Miami Beach USA, which was sold to an unnamed French art collector for 120,000 dollars and eaten by the Georgian performance artist David Datuna. I think that such works are an example of performance art, which may even be seen as a criticism of the way "conceptual art" is dominating the various recent biennales.

The image above presents another of Joseph Rossi's re-interpretation of Cattelan's provocative works - of the 1999 wax sculpture called "Ninth Hour" which showed Pope John Paul II lying dead crushed by a meteorite.

Finnish Artists in Papermade

There are works of 15 well-known artists from Finland in this Papermade exhibition. They range from art-works with pastel and ink on different kinds of paper, to etching, mezzotint and digital prints. They also include 2 installations - (1) Trio Schio, a paper-meche work by Arja Jappinen; and (2) Beauty, an assemblage including cut paper and origami by Jouni Boucht (in the image below).

Among all the other Finnish artists, my favourite were the 'charcoal on paper' art works by Paula Suominen, presented in the image below.

Another work which I liked very much was called "Land of the Free", made with ink and spray paint by Egs, a well-known graffiti artist from Finland. The image below shows part of this work.

Other Art-works at Papermade

An important presence at Papermade was of the Australian artist Giuseppe Romeo. His cockroach-like origami "sculptures" with a metallic finish, greeted visitors on the stairs and spread over the exhibition, on the floors and the walls, looking like an infestation.

I liked the colours and vivacity of the collages by the Italian artist Elsa Pietrelli.

I was touched by the digital print of a woman's face by the Vietnamese artist Quang Pham Khac, who explained that it was an image of his wife, which he has been making in different forms over the recent period to cope up with her death.

I loved the colours and feelings evoked by the series of paintings/collages by Silvio Cattani inspired by the poetry of the famous Russian poet Sergej Yesenin.

The tropical foliage (below) and the human figures created by Canadian artist Zachari Logan in his "Eunuch Tapestrieses", with pastel art-work on black paper, were visually very striking because of their vivid colours and details.

I am not a fan of the "conceptual art". Even in this exhibition, there were a couple of such installations, which I felt were unexciting and a kind of lazy art. However, I liked the idea behind Iginio Iurilli's simple installation called "Exploding tomato sauce can" (below).

I liked the prints from etchings/woodcut/Relief by Tribhuvan Kumar Dev from India, Haladaj Wieslaw from Poland, Linda Whitney from USA (presented in the image below), Marco Trentin & Leonardo Marenghi from Italy and Yuji Hiratsuka from Japan.

Finally, I liked the tiny and exquisite water-colours of birds by Michela Moretto (below).

For this post I have presented pictures of 15 art-works which I had liked. However, I am very much aware of my own fickle subjectivity - on another day, I would have chosen other art-works. If I ask you to choose your favourite art-works from this exhibition, surely your choice would be different from these 15 works!

Conclusions

I think that this edition of Papermade has a lot to see, admire and think. Generally speaking, in an exhibition on paper art, I would like to see works which use paper in innovative ways and not just as a background to make prints or to paint with ink, pastels or water-colours. In that sense, there were not many new ideas in the exhibition. However, if you visit it with an expectation of seeing art which stimulates you and makes you reflect, you won't be disappointed.

Let me conclude this post with two cut-paper origami inspired works - the delicate "Between you and I" by Susanna Doccioli (above), and the gossamer "Suspended Labyrinth" by Susy Manzo (below).

The exhibition is open till 9 February 2020 (Note: it has been extended till 13 April 2020), so if you are visiting Schio, do not miss it. It is a 5 minutes walk from the railway station. 

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