Word and image

Voltare pagina, words by Massimo Recalcati and images by Sarah Mazzetti for Cartaceo#03 and for the Burgo 2021 Calendar

For the third year in a row, the Burgo Group takes part in BookCity Milan with the Cartaceo project. The highlight of this edition is Voltare pagina, a concept combining words by Massimo Recalcati and images by Sarah Mazzetti.

Sarah Mazzetti / Voltare pagina

It is not unnatural to represent human life as if it were a book, a layered surface on which all the traces that have shaped it and defined it are written. Aren't we all basically printed pages? Is our history like a book written behind our backs?

Thus begins the reflection on the analogy between book and life, on an obstacle course among the unforgettable traces of the past. Massimo Recalcati's words and Sarah Mazzetti's images lead us on a journey through the pages of the book and the memory, both individual and collective, that determines who we are, in search of the most intimate, and at the same time shared, meaning of a gesture that is as much familiar as outrageous: voltare pagina (turn the page). For those who love books, there is no more natural gesture. A small gesture, which requires a derisory effort, but which can open worlds and close chapters. Of a book, as well as of life. Aware that only by continuing to read the book can meaning be given to the previous pages and vice versa, turning the page is at the same time a symbol of resistance and will, both of the indissoluble link with the past and of the tension towards the future.

The opportunity for Recalcati and Mazzetti to combine their work is Cartaceo#03, the project with which Burgo Group took part in BookCity Milan and which, for the third year, celebrates paper as the meeting place between word and image, in partnership with Associazione Illustri and ArtsFor_.
The collaboration between Massimo Recalcati and Sarah Mazzetti took shape in a leporello leaflet, printed in limited edition and presented by the authors during a live streaming event on Sunday, November 15, 2020.

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The illustrated Burgo 2021 Calendar

The images created by Sarah Mazzetti are featured in the Burgo 2021 Calendar. The author describes her illustrations as follows:
"The images, mainly focusing on the Person and on the Book, reflect some of the concepts addressed by Recalcati in his use of the Book as a metaphor for the human condition. From the representation of a trauma, or a key event that shapes our personality, like a page to which we always return, to the image of the Book of Life reread and reinterpreted by other people, what I did was give physicality to the story of the human psyche, thinking of it as a theatrical scene in which the body becomes hyper-expressive and symbolic”

For more than 20 years, Burgo Group has been collaborating with Italian and international artists through its classic illustrated calendar, sealing the link between paper, art, words, culture and beauty.

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