We have been living in forced isolation for more than a year and we probably no longer remember the noise of crowded places. Those in which the reflected sound, the time it takes for the sound to bounce up to our ears is less and it is not as clear as when, for example, we shout something in the mountains and the echo returns. The dialogue, the answers, this is probably what we miss most of all. What comes back to us from what we do?

Enrica Borghi's exhibition at Villa Borromeo d'Adda in Arcore recovers the idea of reverberation, here the artist's works are housed in historically spaces and in a certain sense send messages, sounds of which we try to understand echo. The works create a dialogue not only with the spaces that host them but also with the history of the place "they capture and amplify its memory, reinterpret it in a continuity that does not want to create breaks or underline contrasts with the past but become part of it, projection, reverb". With the irony that characterizes her, Enrica Borghi creates a winter garden with venus with false nails, plastic jewels that interact with precious stones, and tapestries of recycled material woven into a loom that recall the "pattern" of her grandmother's blanket. There are no precious materials but “waste objects, packaging, recycled elements torn from the bins of separate plastic collection. With surprising elegance, fragments of the detergents that haunt the daily "bacteriological war" and that we would throw away revive the history of a place. They bring it back to the here and now of the stringent contemporary reflection on the theme of “waste”.

Thus, in this solo show we find the three key themes of Enrica Borghi's artistic practice: women, the relationship with the surrounding environment, with its history and the environmental issue. In addition, given the context, Borghi also recovers that typical romantic atmosphere characterized by the fascination for exoticism, for the different, with which it was usual to be enchanted at the sight of the explorers' collections. For the occasion, in addition to the usual installations made up of poor and recycled materials, Enrica Borghi has created some new works in which elements of "nature" interact, such as a series of photographs dedicated to the Villa and its wonderful garden. Photographs that elaborate the vision through filters obtained from the color of plastic containers and that recall the filters or jellies of the seventies. On the subject of "reverberation" with the Murano statuary chandeliers present in the Villa, the work created in the summer of 2020 in Murano will be exhibited at Studio Berengo, dedicated to the theme of pollution in the Venice lagoon entitled "Gray Lagoon".

There are also two “armors” that make dissonant materials like raw wool interact with the plastics of the containers of everyday detergents. The two armors simulate the protection of female warriors, bringing out quotes from Hans Ruedi Giger but also the cloth of the little red riding hood, the clothes of Pierre Cardin from the sixties and the Mad Max films. The armor is a project made in collaboration with the ITS TAM of Biella and the “ethical” wools of Gomitolorosa.

But who is Enrica Borghi?

“A multifaceted, eclectic and very original artist, with an unmistakable stylistic figure, Enrica Borghi works above all with waste materials, giving life and beauty to objects destined to be thrown in the waste. The female universe plays an important role in her investigation, explored by her as an aesthetic imaginary but also in practices and rituals. His works are the result of "alchemical" processes capable of transforming waste into newly seductive objects".