There are four people behind the rather mysterious title (ZaLiZaZa – family inventory) of the exhibition organized by Galleria Antonio Colombo Arte Contemporanea in Milan, on view until 19 November: the photographer Miro Zagnoli (Za), the artist Emi Ligabue (Li), and their two daughters: the illustrator Olimpia Zagnoli (Za) and the costume designer Emilia Zagnoli (Za).
Curated by Francesca Pellicciari with set-up by the family friend Franco Raggi, the show offers an itinerary that is actually an inventory of works of all kinds – drawings and photographs, wooden books, collages, object-sculptures, fabrics, screens and magic boxes, juxtaposed with sketches, notes, postcards, family photos – in an intense dialogue of correspondences in which the four voices alternate and follow each other, without any chronological order.
Because the ZaLiZaZa family is a very modern one, though of bygone days: if they were not making various artifacts, we might imagine them laboring in a workshop as in the Renaissance, of the Baroque era, experimenting with new techniques, revolutionizing styles or taking them as examples to be imitated.
Their attention is sometimes focused on the same subjects. While for decades design has pervaded the photographic work and analogue sets of Miro (Za), it also returns in the works of Emi (Li), whether with reference to the Cicognino by Albini, the life and work of Charlotte Perriand, or anonymous design found for sale online.
The same use of anonymous or unconventional materials can be found in the “Souvenir” garments by Emilia (Za), made by starting with souvenir dishcloths with the map of Italy. Certain archetypes also recur in the thousands of lines traced by Olimpia (Za), always in search of the perfect synthesis between idea and representation.
Beyond all this, in the different generations of ZaLiZaZa the echo remains of what Matisse told Picasso one day, as Emi (Li) recalls: “In the end, Picasso, we mustn’t try to be too clever. You are like me: what we are all seeking in art is the atmosphere of our first communion.”
