The project undertakes an in-depth analysis of the textile handcrafted tradition through the medium of art. The spontaneous gestures of the hand, as part of the whole repertoire of movements that generally accompany and enhance communication, are at the heart of the project. The manual activity of the artisan, aimed at manufacturing an object, is compared with the manual activity that doesn’t produce anything but accompanies the telling of a story.

The work began with a meeting of a group of citizens invited to share collective stories about their town and describe its peculiar places. The selected story is the one about the production of silk, which starts with the breeding of the silkworms, then the spinning of the cocoons carried out, in the past, in the town-weavery and now brought back to life through the words of the generation that directly experienced the process and the one to whom it’s told.

The two versions of the story have been reconstructed through the video that documents the meeting, selecting the images that express a communicative intention more strongly.

The selected images were then transformed into drawings and subsequently reproduced on canvas, respectively in red and black, using a base embroidery technique, and exhibited along the streets of the town as banners.