The inner side is the impracticable and invisible side of everything. The drawing is the only mediator that can reveal this inner side and make it intelligible because its lines can divide, turn upside down the reality and empty it. Maria’s drawing has the peculiarity to trace the proportions and the building structure improbable. And it does it in the same meticulous way as a constructor worker. Her work suggests the idea that each impossible ecosystem and architecture should at least be calculated in details in order to become somewhat probable. Indeed it is in this kind of imaginary-applied engineering that the artist insists on so that her drawings become fantastical suggestions but they can still be believable. For example in Arrivo fino in fondo e mi rilasso un po’ (I go all the way through and then I take a little rest) the knots that fasten the big bed to the wharf have been studied and drawn to anchor it tightly. And in another work Simmetrico, (Symmetrical), we are allowed to see the secret space where the wood’s roots live, like in a detailed and didactic illustration taken from a textbook. And there are no documents in the war chronicles that speak about the mass suicides that Maria describes in her big drawing I faraglioni di Okinawa (Okinawa’s stacks), the only thing we have is some tales coming from the oral tradition. So Maria works as a historical researcher, reconstructing the details of what could as well be only a legend.

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Laura Carcano