The Fondazione Pastificio Cerere and the Fondazione Severino continue their collaboration, which began in 2022, to bring art into the Rebibbia Women’s Prison in order to create new opportunities for cultural growth, stimulate creativity and promote personal rehabilitation, even in marginal and fragile contexts.
For this new appointment, the artist Fabrizio Sartori conceived the project Kleksografie e disegni ambigui (Kleksographies and Ambiguous Drawings), specifically designed for the psychiatric ward of Rebibbia Femminile prison. The project, curated by Giuliana Benassi, includes a workshop to be held on 29 February and 1 and 2 March, with the aim of developing a new perception of colours and shapes in order to use creativity as an alternative mode of expression to language. Starting from an analysis of primary colours, drawings will be made using coloured ink to delineate figures and objects. A selection of the drawings produced will be exhibited in one of the prison’s communal areas.
Psychologist Hermann Rorschach (1884-1922) spent many years defining the colours, shapes, sizes and all the presentation characteristics of his famous charts. His test is still a tool used by many professionals today. The test charts that bear his name are abstract, symmetrical drawings made with different coloured inks and are given to patients to assess their personality. Man’s ability to recognise something concrete in a random, abstract mark is very old, perhaps even an innate ability.
Its origins can be traced back to kleksography, or ‘drawing with spots’ (from the German kleks – spot), with which the German doctor Justinus Kerner composed several books of poems inspired by these random accumulations of ink.
In collaboration with the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome, a seminar on didactics in prisons will be organised as a moment of restitution for the project, offering an opportunity to study and reflect on the impact of contemporary art in fragile contexts. Both the results of Fabrizio Sartori’s project and those of the workshop conducted by the artist Leonardo Petrucci during the first edition will be shared.
