Il giardino di Leïla

The exhibition project, curated by Cristina Carriere and Gianluca Marinelli, presents the photographic images of **Sonia Martina** and the paintings of **Alba Cobo** in a single narrative that connects different languages and sensibilities. Photography and painting engage in dialogue without hierarchy, constructing a fluid and layered narrative and inviting the visitor to a sensitive crossing, where the gaze becomes an active part of an ongoing and evolving exploration.

At the center of the curatorial project is the body, understood as a territory marked by contradictions: a place where expectations, memories, and transformations coexist. The exhibition explores the tensions between the social dimension that establishes roles and boundaries and individual assertion that shifts balances, between collective gaze and personal power. The artists’ research reinterprets imaginaries and evokes new visions, stimulating questions around themes related to the dialogue between body and nature, identity as a process distant from singular definitions, and artistic practice, opening itself to the complexity of multiple perspectives.

A real place - the garden of a friend of artist Sonia Martina in the South of France - inspired the title of the exhibition. Metaphorically, the garden represents a threshold space between the domestic and the wild, where human creative action meets natural force. In this space, the artists have the freedom to connect with both worlds and maintain an independent and free gaze.

Open until May 16, the exhibition represents the second event of the 2026 program of Parati, contributing to outline a curatorial line focused on innovative artistic practices and experimentation. In this context, the space confirms itself as a dynamic reality, capable of intercepting the most current demands of contemporary art and proposing them within the vibrant cultural scene of Apulia.

**Alba Cobo (1994)** is a visual artist whose painting practice lies at the intersection of body, consciousness, and the symbolic sphere. She currently resides in Lecce, where she develops her work in a shared studio, an open artistic space designed as a meeting place, dialogue, and exchange. She trained at the José Nogué School of Art (Jaén, Spain) in illustration, holds a degree in Fine Arts from the Universitat Politècnica de València, and has obtained a master's degree in teacher training from the University of Granada. In 2025, she moved to Italy to expand her artistic path. In Lecce, she attended PIA, the Independent School for Visual Arts and Curatorial Studies. Cobo's work has been presented in various group exhibitions in Spain and Italy. Notable among these is her participation in Out of the Body Box (2025), at the former Augustinian Convent in Lecce, as well as in the Alonso Cano Awards at the University of Granada (2020). Her works have also been exhibited in spaces such as the Ceferino Navarro Gallery (Granada) and in various exhibitions related to the Universitat Politècnica de València, such as FEM or En procés. Throughout her career, she has received several awards, including the first prize at the art and research competition related to sports at the Universitat Politècnica de València (2018), and the third prize at the V International Painting Competition Manuel Ángeles Ortiz (Jaén, 2020), in addition to various selections in national painting competitions.

**Sonia Martina (1981)** is a visual artist and experimental analog photographer who lives and works in Salento. After years spent between Rome and Berlin as a special effects makeup artist for film and television, she directed her research towards photography, understood as a material practice and process of transformation. She works with film and Polaroid, using double exposures, darkroom experimentation, eco-friendly development in caffenol, and techniques for manipulating and degrading the image, including alternative baths, thermal shocks, and interventions on the emulsion. Central to her research are intimacy, fragility, female identity, and memory: the photographic image is treated as a vulnerable surface, marked by time, questioning its documentary nature. Once triggered, the alteration process becomes irreversible, and the image continues to transform. This ongoing process reflects her way of thinking about images, bodies, and memory: never stable, never definitively resolved. She studied Arts and Performing Sciences and obtained a master's degree with a thesis dedicated to the philosophy of photography. Her work has been published in international photographic magazines, such as FishEye Magazine, Aeonian Magazine, Visual Poetry Magazine, The Winter Book by Woofer Magazine, and used for editorial projects and music artworks.

Founded in December 2025, **PARATI** is the new project room in Taranto dedicated to contemporary artistic research, focusing on emerging artists. The project is animated by artist and critic Gianluca Marinelli, photographer Angelo Greco, and curator Cristina Carriere. Parati is part of the enhancement path supported by Coldiretti Taranto and Campagna Amica, aimed at promoting cultural and aggregation initiatives.
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