“Tactile poetry” exhibition

19 February - 3 April 2022. Exhibition extended to 31 August 2022.
Museo Tattile Statale Omero, Ancona.

Our new "Tactile Poetry" exhibition, situated next to the Museo Omero's Design collection, will be open to visitors from February 19 to August 31.
This artistic project evolved from Andrea Sòcrati's research and was enriched by the collaboration of the two pre-eminent figure in the contemporary art scene Emilio Isgrò and Lamberto Pignotti.

The exhibition is presented by TACTUS to celebrate National Braille Day and the International Mother Language Day (21 February).

Our exhibition, where the sense of touch has the leading role, is inspired by the Neo-Avant-gardes of the 1960s and by what has been defined as "visual poetry", "total poetry" and "experimental poetry", of which Emilio Isgrò and Lamberto Pignotti are one of the major exponents.

This aesthetic operation focuses on tactile values and the Braille code, an alphabet with its own three-dimensionality, which is decoded using touch. Letters of the alphabet have long been the subject of aesthetic elaborations in various artistic fields: from the Renaissance "carmen figuratum" to the typographical poems of Stéphane Mallarmé, from Guillaume Apollinaire's Calligrammes to Filippo Tommaso Marinetti's "tavole parolibere" (words in freedom).

On display is a tactile poem entitled "The Tree" which consists of fourteen "picture/lyrics" each with a relief image of a tree created using the dots of the Braille code. The poem has the form of a typical sonnet, with alternating tactile rhymes defined by the characteristics and tactile assonances of the various materials on which the images are printed. Your hands will discern the shape of the tree and perceive the tactile sensations offered by the diverse materials. The sense of hearing is also stimulated by the rustling sounds produced by touching the panels.
Both senses therefore trigger thoughts, memories and emotions in every visitor, engaging each in an intimate aesthetic experience - an experience that originates in the perceptive and cognitive processes used by blind people, which unite touch and kinesthesia in a dynamic perception that Rudolf Arnheim held to be the foundation of aesthetic experience.

To mark the occasion, Emilio Isgrò has created his first "tactile erasure", a sort of calligram where the embossed cancellations give form to an image that can also be perceived through touch. To underline the leading role of tactile values in his work, Isgrò has added some Braille text. This operation is not only aesthetic-typographic in nature but also adds content which can reveal and suggest insights to the reading hands as to the meaning and significance of the work.

In his work, Lamberto Pignotti evokes the main organ of touch, the hand, by using an ordinary plastic glove of the kind found in the fruit and vegetable departments of supermarkets. The artist traces the outline of the glove with a red marker pen and adds the words "touch poem" with a black felt-tip. The letters making up the word "touch" are each distributed so as to encounter one of the five fingertips. As Pignotti himself says,"the glove erases and prevents us from touching what the hand grasps", making the point that from childhood onwards our upbringing prepares us to keep our distance from the world. It is a distinctive act which becomes a metaphor for the oblivion which has visited our sense of touch, of gesture; at the same time it reminds us of our carnal identity - feeling deeply through the bowels, the muscles, the tendons – in an age which tends to dematerialize experience by propelling us into an ever more virtual reality.

Information

From 19 February to 3 April 2022. Exhibition extended to 31 August 2022.
Museo Tattile Statale Omero - Mole Vanvitelliana
Banchina Giovanni da Chio 28, Ancona
Admission: 5 euros. Concessions as set by the Ministry of Culture.

Open:
Tuesday to Sunday 16:00 - 19:00
Sundays and public holidays also 10:00 - 13:00.
Booking required: telephone and Whatsapp: (+39) 335 56 96 985
E-mail: didattica@museoomero.it
Surgical mask: strongly recommended