Il cuor suo
Anna Piratti
Paper on dyed tarlatan
2025
A paper heart, suspended at the center of the canvas, emerges on a base of dark purple tarlatan. Tarlatan – transparent cotton gauze – is a material of transition: in intaglio printmaking, it removes excess ink from the plates; in theater, it supports costumes and stage sets. Here, it becomes skin and depth. It vibrates in the light. It transforms the painting into an organism.
The heart depicted is not a sentimental icon: it is living muscle, an involuntary organ, a presence etched into flesh. Vulnerable and irreducible. It is what beats within the thoracic cavities and what exists in the most remote non-places of each of us.
Resonating with the work are the words of Albert Camus, from L’Été (1954):
“Au milieu de l’hiver, j’apprenais enfin qu’il y avait en moi un été invincible.”
“In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer.”
An invincible summer, indeed, an invincible hope.
