Kaarina Kaikkonen for Bergamo and Brescia Capital of Italian Culture 2023

Bergamo and Brescia become the exhibition spaces for the iconic installations of Kaarina Kaikkonen, a contemporary Finnish artist who has been working for years with large-scale urban and relational art interventions.

For the annual project Il Mantello di Arlecchino, The Palazzo dell’ Ex Centrale Telefonica in Via Tasso, Bergamo, lends its façade to become the venue for “Waves of Life”, an art installation realised with the contribution of the citizens of Bergamo who can donate old shirts, starting the process of transforming old clothes into artistic devices which are fundamental for the realisation of the work.
Waves of Life refers to the waves, recalling conditions that are very distant from those of the city, the condition of the sea, but capable of sharing with it the reference to an ancient symbolism, made up of connections, of a return to the origin, to birth and to life.

At the same time, the Church of Borgo Trento, Brescia, becomes the site of “Reaching Light,” expands to an even more heterogeneous dimension, with artistic units made up of shirts and also children’s and woman’s clothes donated by people in the Brescia community. The installation turns the entire building become the root for the formation of a flower: from the roots of the church grows a new form that with its upward thrust, almost waiting to be able to fly, embodies hope, of the future and of a new way of looking at the city, relationships and the present time.