Giusy Lauriola

Vanishing at the Correale Museum in Sorrento

In the silence of the Correale Museum's halls, the works from the Vanishing project were exhibited, for the first time, alongside the Correale brothers' art collections, a universe spanning the 17th to 19th centuries that speaks calmly of history, memory, and time.

The resin, acrylic, and enamel canvases, the breathing flowers/nuclei, the figures oscillating between disappearance and rebirth, offered themselves up for dialogue with the ancient masterpieces: a transparency that is not escape, but presence.

During the exhibition week (October 12-18, 2025), school students, families, and tourists were invited to ask themselves three simple yet powerful questions:

"What do you see?", "What do you feel?", "Which work would you take home and why?"

And the answers were engraved like fingerprints: the voices of the youngest visitors expressed surprise and wonder: "I never thought a flower could seem alive," "The woman looks at me and speaks to me without words."

A subtle thrill can be sensed in those comments: the awareness that art is not just contemplation but participation, that every canvas is an invitation to remain, not to fade away.

The work "My Magdalene," inspired by Artemisia Gentileschi's Penitent Magdalene, has become a catalyst for emotion: the young people describe it as "a woman who rises," "a silent scream that finds light," "a gentle, wounded strength." This is emotional participation: no longer just looking, but feeling, a pulse that spans generations, connecting those who hold a smartphone and those who paint with color-soaked fingers.

This encounter between ancient and contemporary art, between matter and transparency, has created a bridge between past and present. Fading here is not synonymous with disappearing: it is becoming something else, transforming, remaining in the memory and breath of the observer.

In the young people's faces, we saw the silence that precedes thought. They expressed "I bring home an emotion" rather than "I bring home a painting." And perhaps it is precisely there that the deepest meaning is measured: in the emotion that endures, beyond time, beyond age.

Thus this stage becomes a watershed: not just an exhibition, but a circle of light that illuminates what is within. The works are not silent readers of history, but windows opening onto the present. And the young people who participated, with their genuine, spontaneous comments, became active participants, "reading" the work with new eyes, bringing their voices into the museum.

*"I saw the light in a flower."

*"I heard the silence of a strong woman."

Their words remain. And I welcome them, because it is in that welcome that Vanishing finds its truest form.

Acknowledgements

Sincere thanks to the Association Le Amiche del Museo Correale and the SyArt Gallery for their invaluable support. To the Board of Directors of the Museo Correale, who accepted the Association's proposal.

Special thanks to the students and teachers of local schools, who, with their sensitivity and spontaneity, have given voice and life to this dialogue between past and present.

Thanks also to all the visitors who have left a thought, an emotion, a fragment of themselves: it is thanks to them that Svanire continues to transform into a place of listening and sharing.

GIUSY LAURIOLA

artist

Ph credit Giovanni De Luca

(The artist with the owner gallery and curator Rossella Savarese)