Manuela Catania captured my attention because of her beautiful, ethereal, immersive installations. She is a multidisciplinary artist with a background in fashion and jewellery design. Catania calls herself a sensory designer because her work is deeply connected to the senses. In her work, the viewer engages in a whole-body experience of form, material and space. Each piece or installation holds careful craftsmanship that is an expression of beauty and a love of colour and nature.
Catania deliberately designs her work to be sensory to assist an audience in connecting with their own sense of self and to be grounded in the present moment of engagement. Her work, The Five Senses of The Future - textile installation for the countless cities biennial 2021, presents as a cave of light and colour and evokes memory and emotion. The immersive qualities are created by the inclusion of scent and knotted, repurposed fabrics. As written by Catania herself, “This is a pavilion of sustainability, recycling, and fashion. Old tablecloths become walls of light. Old curtains turn into arches that keep secrets and images. Plastic bags become flying skirts…The magic of breath and light will unfold. Emotional rain will fall. And the soul will embrace a deep human connection.” (1) She desires for her audience to experience safety in connecting with self, to feel a deep sense of being loved.
I find a strong connection with Manuela Catania’s work as she creates ‘vessels of emotion, memory and touch’ which carry a sense of time, and gesture towards the narrative of the history of the fabrics she reclaims. This is made visible in the loose threads that fall from each strip, and in that the fabrics are not dyed to harmonise with one another but arranged in such a way to create a unified whole. Her work echoes a practice of care for both the environment and the viewer, resonating with my desire to use reclaimed fabrics that hold story and to carry a practice of care. In that regard, I, like Catania, seek to practice care by demonstrating an act of repair in how fabrics are used, through creating a safe environment that allows for human connection and grounding and by caring for the materials in using them rather than treating them as disposable.
https://www.munthe.com/blogs/munthe-art-monday/munthe-art-monday-manuela-catania
https://www.farm-foundation.it/people
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQjuannGHOs
https://artscourses.hkust.edu.hk/node/21
file:///Users/toniaburgess/Downloads/Realm%20of%20Senses%20by%20Manuela%20Catania.pdf