Pizziolo, M 2024, Bahar Heidarzade. Le mie pietre sono aquiloni, enhanced Challenge, EdiXion, Milan.
An exhibition to reflect on violence against women. The majestic setting of the Scaligero Castle in Malcesine, a medieval village overlooking the shores of Lake Garda, welcomed in 2024 the exhibition Le mie pietre sono aquiloni, a series of installations by Iranian artist Bahar Heidarzade (Tehran, 1981).
The exhibition, curated by Marina Pizziolo and Romano Ravasio, aims to stimulate reflection on the dramatically current theme of violence against women. Not to mourn yesterday’s victims, but to save tomorrow’s victims, with the extraordinary power of sharing.
Bahar Heidarzade was born in Iran, a country where heavy prohibitions weigh upon women, drastically limiting their freedom. To be free, Heidarzade had to abandon her country: if she returned, she would be punished with imprisonment.
The exhibition continues the artist’s research into the weight of memories, symbolically represented by stones. The stones are created by the artist in papier-mâché, using sheets of newspapers containing disturbing news reports: because negative memories are not only personal ones, but also collective ones, especially since the information system makes us the target of an uninterrupted flow of news.
The immersive installation. The heart of the exhibition is the large immersive installation created in the Sala Labia of the Scaligero Castle. At the centre of the room, on the floor, a video is projected showing the artist lying down, crushed by an enormous stone. Women know how to take on the pain of others, more than others do. And women are too often victims of acts of violence.
Above Heidarzade’s body, dozens of stones are suspended in space. Visitors can feel the mental weight of those stones hurled, yet blocked in mid-air. “Still hands throwing stones. Still women victims of acts of violence”, writes curator Marina Pizziolo. “We must learn to listen to those women’s words, before they become screams. Only thus can we stop those stones, hurled in the name of something we cannot call love. And make them remain suspended, in flight. It is we, together, who can transform stones into kites”.
The Stone XXL performance: the meaning of sharing. On one wall of the Room, the Stone XXL performance that the artist created in the streets of the village of Malcesine is projected. The element of memory returns, taking the form of an enormous boulder, which in this performative intervention is carried through the streets by the artist and by those who feel called to intervene to help her. Bahar Heidarzade’s performance is the sharing of a burden, participation in suffering, collective liberation from pain. If we are together, memories cannot crush us. Memories, especially those of violence suffered by us or by others, must become action, sharing and therefore hope. Only thus, once again, can they become a kite, capable of lifting us in a flight that is the measure of our humanity.
In the castle’s external spaces, the artist has instead created a series of site-specific interventions of conceptual suggestion. Interventions that fit into the spaces poetically, without erasing the vision of the architecture and landscape, but creating the sense of a path: a sort of golden thread that illuminates certain points of the castle, reminding visitors of the exhibition’s theme.
From exhibition project to EdiXion book. The reflections developed during the Malcesine exhibition found further exploration in the volume Le mie pietre sono aquiloni, published by EdiXion in 2024. Marina Pizziolo and Romano Ravasio, who curated both the exhibition and the publication, have developed through years of collaboration with international artists a particular sensitivity towards themes of forced migration and gender violence. The book not only documents the exhibition project, but broadens the reflection on art as an instrument of social denunciation and of building cultural bridges between different communities.
Enhanced content of the book. Explore the multimedia materials embedded:
– p. 33: The exhibition curator dialogues with the artist
– p. 43: Stone XXL performance, May 2024
– p. 44: How the artist creates her stones
