Illuminations 

Curator: Immediately, this minimalist drawing, simply titled "Illuminations," gives me a sense of stillness and openness. The imperfect ellipse floating in so much white space invites quiet contemplation. Editor: Absolutely, it's deceptively simple. It looks like a child's first attempt at drawing an oval but knowing Simone Forti’s work, there is likely intention in the materials used and in this act. The repeated, overlapping lines; is this charcoal or graphite? It speaks to a process of making and remaking, a searching for form. Curator: The ellipse itself, an archetypal symbol found across cultures for centuries; could it be a vessel, or perhaps the cosmic egg, a universal symbol of creation? It carries associations with wholeness and cycles. Editor: I see it more in terms of labor. Forti came from a background exploring improvisational movement. So is this drawing perhaps a residue, a record of a durational performance? What sort of tool was used to generate that subtle texture and line? Was it fast, gestural work or slow, and meticulous? Curator: Perhaps the meaning isn’t about a definitive reading, but instead about the suggestion of form. Think of the halo in religious paintings. Even in its abstraction, the form implies the potential for divinity, doesn't it? Editor: True. But without more data, without knowing the paper type, the properties of the mark-making implement or what stage of Forti's career this comes from, any iconographic meaning feels speculative. I am drawn instead to the almost casual act of its making as if the entire drawing had some element of performance. Curator: But in that very act, doesn't it open up channels for deeper psychological associations and our symbolic vocabularies to pour in? We bring our histories of perceiving the ellipse, the circle and apply them. Editor: Possibly so. And by deconstructing the methods, one could reconstruct her intention and the piece can continue to reveal multiple interpretations in its own quiet way. Curator: Precisely. It provides a starting point for each of our own illuminations.