Folding and Unfolding
My name is Una Marzorati, I am Italian, I lived in Milan, Bologna, Torino and Cagliari, then in France, and now I live in England with my two sons.
My mum taught me origami when I was five years old, and I continued to occupy my hands and mind with this activity during the school years, studying Computer Science at University, and working as an animator for TV and as a video editor.
After becoming a mum, I started to create art by glueing modular origami to canvases, in geometric patterns.
I love the repetitive and meditative nature of this process. The origami shapes I use the most are the ninja star, the tetrahedron and the butterfly. My ideas come from visions during meditation and reflexions on our values and life, with the intention of showing beauty and bring calm and healing. I find inspiration in nature and in my children.
My first born, for example, used to draw rainbows all the time, so I created artworks using the colours of the rainbow, that for me are connected to the energy centers in the human body.
This is “Collective Heart” (folded paper on canvas, 61x61cm).
Every module represents one person, one heart, that with all the others forms a big, collective heart.
This artwork is a symbol of the concept of community that is created when people come together and generate something new, beautiful and useful for everyone.
I recently transformed some of my artworks into digital designs, printed on T-Shirts, notebooks, and other sustainable products. I sign my art using the “unamarz” alias, and “unamarz Creations” as the name for all my creations together.
This is “Expression Blue” (folded paper on canvas, 61x61cm), it’s like a mandala of origami butterflies placed on three concentric circles. For me the butterfly is a symbol of beauty, transformation and freedom. Blue because it’s the colour of the fifth energy center in our body, that is in our throat and corresponds to our expression, our voice. The triangular shape of origami butterflies is ideal to form stars and be lost for a moment in the collective shapes. In each circle there are five butterflies, so number 5 is present 3 times in the artwork, and in the colour blue.
We can interpret number 5 too as a sign of change, transformation. This artwork is an invitation to freedom of expression. Origami paper is beautiful, precious, perfectly square and colourful. I used other types of paper as well in my art: book pages, handmade paper from Venice, maps, magazines… It’s with our hands that we recognise the best paper to fold origami. The choice is first an experience of touch, and then of sight, vision.
“Here and now” is the “place” where we go when we are in awe, surprised, focused, when we admire art, when we build or create something with our hands, and it’s the place where we are truly ourselves and we feel well, it’s the present moment.
I wish that young people could feel these emotions when they approach art, as spectators but also as experimenters, creators.
In the future I would like to create interactive art that invites the spectator/interactor to live or re-live the wonder of childhood, to go back to the present moment.
Una Marzorati
unamarz Creations
Website: https://unamarz.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/una.marz/
Comments