Serra Bassa
Ruins also say no (Anche le rovine dicono no)
This series, consisting of four works painted on antique linen and embroidered, is both a warning against the death sentence of vestiges, ruins and debris, and a call for repair, restoration and preservation of fractures, traces and defects, in favour of rediscovery and memory. Questioning the notions of reworking, re-texturing and restoration, Yentele calls for cracks, flaws, fractures and signs of breakage to be highlighted and preserved with visible traces of repair. Rather than restoring a damaged object to its original state and erasing the signs of time, it is a matter of crossing temporalities, of making repair a bridge between the material and the spiritual, of inscribing in matter itself the stratifications of a material life like the geological layers of an earth in which everything is added to and interwoven with time.
In this series of paintings, piles of stones, scattered and disjointed, are meticulously repaired by embroidery threads. This visual metaphor encapsulates the dual nature of the fragments. The stones, once part of a larger structure, now lie in disarray, symbolising the inevitable decay and disintegration that time and circumstance impose on all things. Yet, the embroidery that unites them represents the human capacity to repair, to find beauty and meaning in the broken pieces of our existence. The act of embroidery is similar to the process of memory and storytelling: we reconstruct the fragments of our past to create a coherent narrative. The concept of the fragment invites us to consider the potential for healing and the creation of new forms of beauty, stitching up and finding the threads that can unite us once again.
Born in 1974, Yentele is a self-taught French artist who lives and works in Paris. After studying music and languages, which she taught for a while, Yentele felt the need to work with her hands and for ten years ran a textile design business using antique linen and hemp fabrics, creating patchworks of antique and contemporary textiles. When the cushion format became too restrictive, the traces and flaws of the old linens were no longer cut but preserved and, like palimpsests, the textile paintings emerged. Since then, under the name of her embroiderer grandmother, Yentele has been painting and embroidering textile paintings on antique linen canvases. Working exclusively with antique and vintage linen was an obvious choice, both for the beauty of the weaves and for the essential issue of recycling.