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Hold that little switch in your hands and everything changes: between light and darkness a Malvadìa Gadi lamp is suspended, like a jaunt among the dunes of life, and through images tells of what has thus been seen – or, it would seem, understood; and in its intent to give meaning to the differences between the daytime and nocturnal vision of things, the creative effort has entailed a suspension with light itself suspended in a continuous alternation of light and darkness as one paints. This is how Malvadìa works: choosing forms and colors both for light and for darkness, striving as hard as she might to achieve the much-desired Harmony.

Because only She, Harmony, can soothe the this world’s ills, because the pain, as that Genoese poet said, is in the eyes.

An encounter with a Malvadìa Gadì lamp immediately offers you a sensorial expansion: your eyes move back and forth along new lines, your timid hands feed, your hearing loses its way in the voice hidden in the little hanging cover as though in the wake of a siren song, your sense of smell steps ahead trying to imagine what past era it is approaching. And that of taste?

Yes, taste: so stimulating is it that you hanker to taste the mellowness of the painted colors!

This is the playful part that Malvadìa imagines when working on a lamp, especially when on commission: it she delights in imagining which flavors the recipient of that future luminous companion might prefer.

And there’s another game to be played with a Malvadìa Gadì: on/off.

Yes, because lamps/stories take on different characters when on and off, and not only in their colors: the figures themselves and their relative force of their masses change.

Looking at it means finding, each time, something new.

To transform what no longer serves, the useless things, the scraps of a life, and with the skill in one’s hands and an active mind full of paths to pursue, into a “thing”, something alive, new and pulsating- a resource? Indeed just that, a resource – and for many reasons.

Ours is not the sphere of mathematical or accounting assessment – despite the great figures our time may call for – but, rather, that of the very modest will to propagate a concept – upcycling – whereby it will be a track, a groove and road into our future. A future that can only be circular and sustainable.

Only thus will it be livable.

I lived a happy time in Genoa, not painting, but so taken with the carruggi, the people, and that wind I can’t forget that I can only honor its memory. Thus “the anchovies” were born, fish so luminescent they rival the full moon and, it is said among the harbor’s nets, provoke its envy to the point that this is why they are at sea: because anchovies are stars in the sea. And on dark nights they surface near the crest of the wave, bringing luck to the fishermen who, in Zena (Genoa), are called by poets and drinkers “fishers of stars.”

From shade to light: lighting the evening

From shadow, always so feared, to light: I wanted to devote myself to this realm, translating my interest in painting onto elements new to me, that would shine with images of new light. Light screens. Images to switch on: to greet the sunset, to welcome you and accompany you into the evening. The Light Screens are mostly watercolors on cotton paper, surrounded by wooden supports salvaged from painting frames, cleaned and protected with natural wax, mounted on linear and sturdy electrical structures. With a low-wattage light they can keep faith with your dreams all night, lulling your sleep; or offer you a friendly, gentle, silent presence on winter afternoons.

Upcycling: the different, and very stimulating, relationship with objects

Once outward norms are abolished, and the bulimic use of “iconic” has waned (really? if only!), we can encounter new stories. Stories “freely freed” by imagination, in an arbitrary expression that, starting from the trace on the object — whatever it may be, and which tells its lived history — expands into a sign in the present.