On “In a Pink Room”

By Antonio Zimarino

Let us begin by outlining the most evident formal elements: the pervasive use of pink, the recurring theme of the child and childhood—clearly and psychologically “feminine”—the presence of sacred motifs, a palpable and at times indefinite materiality, deformation, the “compression” of the human figure into matter, identifiable through faces and expressions; and at times, female faces (self-portraits?) seemingly in flight, transformed into nocturnal butterflies.
Undoubtedly, these are clues pointing toward deep psychological themes: the question of female corporeality, the transition from a state of innocence, the impossible longing for its return. But also the limits of the physical, the interplay of fear and wonder, the desire to transcend or understand the boundaries of one’s own materiality in order to release a dream, an emotion, or a desire—one that survives only by transcending or dissolving itself, reducing the dream or desire to a delicate, liberated, and dreamlike imaginative possibility.
A sense of the sacred triggers a process of iconizing childhood, almost a celebration of a condition that is far from resolved—one felt as deeply problematic: the notion of an impossible child, of a celebrated, dreamed-of, or perhaps denied motherhood. Images emerge of a vivid matryoshka, an ancestral and popular symbol of life and maternity, but also of mystery, introspection, and deep inner search—a contemporary, suffering matryoshka, constrained and imprisoned, marked by tension.
These are the resonances that emerge from a formal identity—signaling that this, least of all, is not “light” art. On the contrary: the level of introspection and the effort to give visible form to an unresolved inner tension creates an effect that is profoundly unsettling. There is no resolution here, only the attempt to recombine stories, memories, meanings, and experiences—to look them in the face, waiting to recognize a meaningful thread.
If the work is undeniably introspective and personal, it also reflects a psychological reality of the feminine universe—one that, arguably, women perceive with greater immediacy. For the male viewer, this installation confronts us with another half of experience—one we ought to approach with greater awareness, in order to understand that the “feminine” is not merely a projection we impose upon it, but rather an existential otherness we can barely intuit.
In this way, Imperiali speaks both to herself and to the viewer about womanhood—the existential sensitivity of the feminine. A femininity understood not merely as a matter of sexual distinction, but as an identity rooted in its own way of being-in-the-world.

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