KROMYA Art Gallery Verona presents Imparaticci, curated by Silvia Concari, the first solo exhibition by Federica Gottardello (Brescia, 2000), a young artist who has chosen embroidery as her distinctive artistic language — a way to weave together memory, matter, and time. Through the delicate act of stitching thread on paper, Gottardello explores the value of slowness and the persistence of gesture, reinterpreting a traditional feminine practice as a contemporary, sculptural language.

The title Imparaticci — meaning “samplers” — refers to the early embroidery exercises historically assigned to young girls as proof of skill, discipline, and domestic virtue. These small textile compositions, bearing alphabets, floral motifs, and geometric symbols, were once both learning tools and instruments of social identity. Gottardello revisits this tradition to reclaim its narrative power: what was once a symbol of control becomes, in her hands, a gesture of self-expression, autonomy, and quiet rebellion.

In her work, embroidery transcends the two-dimensional plane to inhabit space. Thread and paper merge to form light, sculptural structures in which void and matter coexist, shadow becomes substance, and each thread is a trace of thought. Her practice combines fragility and strength, revealing a rhythm of making that is both intimate and monumental.

The landscape, a central theme in Gottardello’s research, unfolds as a poetic and inner geography. Her large-scale works, such as Trame Spontanee, Reinventare il Selvatico, and Tagliare le Fila, evoke vegetal, aquatic, or microscopic forms — a natural world in transformation, abstract yet vividly alive.

In the site-specific installation Sovrascritture, three embroidered textiles are suspended in space like translucent maps. Their layered threads resemble aerial views of terrain — networks, traces, crossings — suggesting that embroidery itself can become a form of mapping, a way of tracing presence and memory.

The exhibition culminates in an immersive installation of dozens of imparaticci floating in the air: small, colorful thread sculptures forming a constellation of organic shapes. Each element carries a story, a fragment of experience, a hidden message to be discovered. Together, they compose a living archive, a landscape of emotions and signs.

In Imparaticci, embroidery becomes a universal language — an act of care, resistance, and self-definition. What was once an educational tool becomes an archive of memory and freedom. Stitch by stitch, Federica Gottardello transforms tradition into a contemporary gesture that reaffirms the power of making as a timeless human act.