Enrica Borghi

The Palle di neve (Snowballs) are polystyrene balls of different sizes that cut and processed plastic bottles are attached to. A light bulb inside each bottle illuminates the balls with white and blue light.  

“Even a piece of waste or trash can become a poetic, uplifting image: from consumerism to art, to regenerate the object, with the utmost dignity” explains the artist, who has been making installations with waste materials since the early 1990s, often dealing with stereotypes related to female identity with subtle irony, as in the case of the cast of a Venus de Milo partially covered with fake nails and with a headdress made by assembling waste, which she gave the title Venere (Venus) (2000). Together with Pannoli’s work, Palle di neve won the City of Turin’s Luci di Natale competition reserved for young artists and launched in 1998 on the occasion of the first edition of Luci d’Artista.  

Mosaico (Mosaic) is from 2007, a series of modular panels made from the bottoms of coloured plastic bottles that are inspired by the interior decorations of the cathedral of Salerno, the city that commissioned the work. Mosaico was exhibited in Turin between 2009 and 2010 thanks to a collaboration between the two cities. The uniqueness of Enrica Borghi’s work (Premosello Chiovenda, Verbano Cusio Ossola, 1966) led her to participate, in 1997, in the exhibition Trash. Quando i rifiuti diventano arte (Trash. When trash becomes art), curated by Lea Vergine at the Museo d’Arte Contemporanea di Trento e Rovereto and, since then, exhibiting in various international museums. Her social and cultural sensitivity is what led her to found, in 2005 with Davide Vanotti, the Asilo bianco association, which deals with contemporary art and promotes young artists in the area between Lake Maggiore and Lake Orta. 

Silvia Maria Sara Cammarata