The exhibition Between Body and Soul opened at the Civic Museum of Asolo in Italy in September 2024. I was invited as one of 15 artists and I participated with three pieces from the series “The Handkerchief Tree”.

I have been living at the same place the last 14 years and just behind my house there is a tree. I pass it almost everyday but haven’t really noticed it until one day last spring. It was an early morning and the sun just started to lighten up the sky with that golden, early spring morning light, when I saw it. The tree was blooming! White, thin flowers hanging from all over the tree. I had never seen anything like it and the scene was breath-taking. I stood there for a long time and it felt like the tree was caressing me with its white handkerchiefs. It was a poetic and magical moment.

The exhibition Between Body and Soul is the second edition of the Biennal Orizzonti d’Autore which, in addition to Between Body and Soul, also displayed the Archaeometra Lifetime Achievement Award for Contemporary Jewelry; a retrospective exhibition with the world-renowned jewelry artist Robert Smit. In the first edition, Giampaolo Babetto’s life’s work was presented with over 100 works from 1970, and this year’s exhibition offered an impressive selection from Robert Smit’s long career.

The Civic Museum of Asolo was built in the 15th century and has a permanent collection of archaeological finds and paintings. Asolo, known as “the city of a hundred horizons”, carries a huge cultural heritage that has now been updated with a jewelry art biennial, something that was made visible all over the city with posters and flyers. It was a great feeling to see this, often invisible, art genre get space and focus and for a few months become the city’s cultural centre point.

The curator of the exhibition is Thereza Pedrosa who in 2012 founded Beautiful People Live Art, a digital platform for contemporary art in various forms, and who since 2019 runs Thereza Pedrosa Gallery, a contemporary jewelry art gallery in Asolo. The day after our opening, an exhibition with works by Giampaolo Babetto and Manfred Bischoff opened at the gallery. The exhibition was a collaboration together with Quittenbaum Gallery.

After the opening, I went to Venice together with my colleague Hanna Liljenberg and the artists and gallerists Marianne Schliwinski and Jürgen Eickhoff. The Venice Biennale had required considerably more time than we had, but it was great to see a little of it and we hope to have the opportunity to visit the event again.

A big thank you to Thereza and her family for inviting us to be a part of the exhibition and for the warm welcoming in Asolo, to Marianne and Jürgen for guiding us in Venice and to IASPIS for the greatly appreciated travel grant.