“With the feeling that they still have things to discover and unveil within themselves, also falling in love with their own shadow zones.”
That’s what Elena El Asmar hopes visitors take from UNVEILING, the latest instalment in Baldinini’s growing dialogue between fashion and contemporary art. Debuting in Berlin during Gallery Weekend, the installation transforms the brand’s Kurfürstendamm boutique into a contemplative space — one that blurs the lines between poetic narrative, memory, and material exploration.
Originally unveiled during Milan Design Week, UNVEILING marks a continuation of Baldinini’s creative collaboration with the Italian-Lebanese artist, under the direction of Italian artist Matete Martini. Sculptural elements, video, and an intricately curated shop window come together in a subtle interplay with the tactile sensibility of the Flower Mesh collection, evoking fading light, texture, and inner landscapes.
“The collaboration with Baldinini came about thanks to artist Matete Martini who involved me in the project a few months ago, together with other people connected with the world of Milanese art,” El Asmar explains. “Crucial elements were the relationship of esteem that binds me to Matete, who is still the art director of the project, and having had the opportunity to get to know better Carla Migliore and Paola Scapaticci from Baldinini, thanks to whom we have found a way to exchange opinions and visions on how to make fashion and art talk.”
Her sculptural work — deeply inspired by themes of remembrance and transformation — enters into conversation with Baldinini’s collection, guided by Martini’s orchestration. “The installation project, as a whole, is curated by Matete Martini who put together what are the formal elements of my work with the suggestions that make up the latest line designed by Baldinini, creating a dialogue made up of cross-references, signs and lights that speak to each other and evoke unexpected possibilities.”
At the core is L’esercizio del lontano, an ongoing body of work El Asmar has developed since 2010. “The ‘far’, understood as distance in space and time, refers to a kind of imaginary landscape that contains within it the possibility of experiencing the places we have known during our lives and that, in some mysterious way, go on to construct what we are in the present,” she reflects. “Creating a vision means that that very world that did not exist before, now goes on to affect and redefine who we are.”
This layering of memory, place and cultural influence defines El Asmar’s approach — a perspective shaped by both Tuscan hills and Levantine architectural detail. “Every time I work in the studio I realise how each sign is in some way the sum of all the landscapes that my eye has captured from childhood to the present day — the hills of Tuscany intertwine with each other and with the trees, to the point of transforming themselves into profiles characterised by the inlays typical of Middle Eastern houses.”
Transposing such internal geographies into sculpture is never literal. “The writer Giuseppe Pontiggia recommended ‘writing for the self that coincides with others’ and I believe that in some way artists seek this through the tools of their work, like digging as deep inside themselves as possible to get as close as possible to those forms of feeling that go from being personal to nourishing a universal, common ground,” she adds.
This iteration of UNVEILING also includes a newly acquired sculpture, now permanently housed in Baldinini’s Berlin store. “It almost feels like I am also travelling with my work, which makes me very happy,” El Asmar says. “I hope it will trigger some new dreams and desires in the minds of some walkers.”
Where the collaboration may lead next remains open-ended. “We’ll see!” she exclaims. “After all, they make shoes and shoes are made for walking and fantasising, but I don’t know where mine will take me yet.”
The installation will be open to visitors from April 22 to May 10, daily from 10 AM to 7 PM. Discover more here.
photography. Matete Martini
words. Gennaro Costanzo
