Cycle 2 – Heroines – Parthenope

“For whatever we lose (like a you or a me)

it’s always ourselves we find in the sea.”

— E. E. Cummings

Parthenope was created during the pandemic, following an invitation from the Monteoliveto Gallery in Naples.

Unable to travel or host physical exhibitions, the gallery invited artists to imagine the city through a written text — without images — as a place to dream rather than to document.

From an excerpt of How About We Stay? by Gilbert Ciervo, referring to Castel dell’Ovo, I was asked to envision Naples. I knew it only by reputation, yet I had to grasp its soul.

At the heart of Castel dell’Ovo lies the legend of Parthenope, the siren whose body, cast back by the sea after her defeat by Ulysses, was said to have been welcomed by the inhabitants. Honored as a tutelary figure, she gave her name to the ancient Greek settlement. Naples remains deeply tied to her image — a siren-city, magnetic and untamable.

In this work, Parthenope becomes an inner presence.

Her body seems to contain the sea; her hair unfolds like a mental landscape where architecture, mythology, memory and vegetation intertwine. Castel dell’Ovo appears fragmented, absorbed into the organic flow of the drawing. Naples becomes intimate territory — both dreamed and geographical.

The blue — rare, almost secret — acts as a breath within the black and white composition.

Touches of gold leaf evoke southern light as well as the sacred dimension of the myth.

First presented in the exhibition Napoli… Imaginée (2021), the work was later shown in Naples at the Bicycle House (Galleria Principe 27-28), as well as in the project “Mad for Naples and for Somma Vesuvio.” It also took part in the 1st Salamander Prize organized by the Monteoliveto Gallery.

Although created within a specific curatorial framework, Parthenope evolved into a more personal exploration — that of myth as mirror.

For, as E. E. Cummings writes, in whatever we lose — a place, a face, a certainty — it is often ourselves that we rediscover in the sea.