Alice Visentin

"The artist tells the story of a woman who is transformed slowly from a sibyl, sorceress and fairy into a witch with the power to heal and cure but also to perpetrate evil, condemned by the Church, no longer free to be and to act. A witch imagined and invented by the community, or a witch of her own volition, out of rebellion, or destitution, or solitude; a woman cast as a witch out of envy, a witch for convenience in moments of scarcity, a witch as a lover of evil. These witches are ably described by Jules Michelet, where historical analysis, hegemonic forms of cultural life and magical folklore are combined. Repositories of memory, Alice Visentin’s paintings embrace her protagonists but also her viewers in a common, shared space in which poetry, magic and scattered voices of power and suffering are brought together to sing a version of the unsaid, which there is an increasingly urge to listen to and to stare into the face."
Ilaria GianniFrom the steep valleys of the Canavese, Alice Visentin has learned to observe people, to tell their stories and present them with the wonder that characterises fairy tales and folk legends. Her work seems extremely important today for its way of interpreting time and identity. Careful observation, allowing ourselves to be fascinated, listening to stories and transforming any aspect of reality into a fantastic event, reconstructs a relationship with reality that instead of ending in its own immediate consumption calls upon the penetrating mediation of the senses and imagination. It stimulates a vitality that is not mere action on the world but an expressive relationship with it, composed of pauses and resumptions, and silences and questions that follow ‘the rhythm of a slow and passionate spirit.'
Caterina Molteni