Identity and Diversity

L’identico e il differente (The identical and the different), this is the title chosen by Daniela De Lorenzo for the sculpture, made in 2003 and permanently made part of the collection of the National Gallery in 2016.

The sculpture in clear, white felt, suspended in space, is made up of vertically aligned anthropomorphic figures, “hollow clothes” that mutually support and hold each other, defined by an unchanging model that takes on different features as it develops along the vertical axis.

The shapes are determined by the complex play of seams and folds of the material. The curved line, the fold represent an actual linguistic tool for the artist. Felt takes on life, volume and plasticity in the play of the folds, there is no trace of compositional factors, there is instead the overarching principle of “in-forming”, of the material taking form according to its own variations.

The fold is an expressive code aimed at giving life to the formulation of an intimate universe, an interior “folding”, in which the mystery of identity, of the very practicality of the self-portrait becomes an element under examination.

Daniela De Lorenzo states the impossibility of revealing the subject as a unique identity so that its structure, its former position, outside, behind or in front, takes centre stage.

The sculptural matter is moulded to create clear, incisive, memorable images that enclose their own foundation, without ever yielding to narrative consecutio.

The artist tells nothing about herself in her self-portraits, she stops before that: she sheds light - in her personal philosophy of the subject - on the eternal and always crucial concepts of identity and diversity…