Concertina Books

Folding books of painted cardboard that open like accordions, inspired by Japanese (orihon) books. They are painted with silkscreen paints in bright colours that shine even more vividly under fluorescent lights. With inscriptions written in Chinese calligraphy, 18th century cursive script, liturgical Cyrillic, or in Roman characters, they depict landscapes in a sea of famous sayings and quotations, or alternatively, given that Gandolfi is compiling a book on the semiotics of insults, phrases inspired by this work. Various poems in Latin, Arabic and Persian meander and intertwine calligraphically with insults and mystical Sufi phrases.
Fiora Gandolfi has exhibited these works at the Conference / Performance / Exhibition Insults in Italy and the World at the Italian Cultural Centre in Paris in 2002.