Nigri corvi parturient albas columbas

Illusion and disillusion are the dialectical poles that have guided Magdalena Fermina’s artistic research for years, converging in the works of "Nigri corvi parturient albas columbas", her solo exhibition on view from October 18 to November 15, 2025 at SCD Studio, via Bramante 22N, in Perugia, curated by Barbara Pavan.

The exhibition project, opening on Saturday, October 18 at 5:30 p.m., brings together and sets in dialogue some of the artist’s most significant cycles, tracing a path that is both intimate and universal. The show is accompanied by a catalogue published by Al3vie Edizioni, with texts by Davide Artico, Lorella Giudici, and Luca Vannozzi.

The Exhibition

The journey begins with the embroidered curtain featuring "La colomba" by Trilussa: a liminal gesture that invites one to cross the threshold of illusions to question reality in its barest essence. Here opens the first chapter, "Disenkanto", a Judeo-Spanish word encapsulating the experience of disenchantment, the fracture between what is desired and what reality imposes. The installation consists of white-on-white embroideries of famous advertising slogans from the 1980s, a decade of optimism and confidence, now emptied and rendered spectral by the awareness of the contradictions and crises that followed those promises of prosperity and progress.
The path continues with "Nuntius Dei", a cycle begun over fifteen years ago and still evolving: photographs of stone angels, ancient guardians of tombs, stitched shut with surgical thread. Figures that once symbolized protection and transcendence here are transformed into silent relics, stripped of their voices and made witnesses of a West that, having emancipated itself from the power of religions, has surrendered to other forms of faith: the market, technology, the illusion of infinite progress.

Illusion and disillusion also inhabit the dynamics of the everyday. In "AltF4", Fermina explores suspended lives behind windowpanes and smartphone screens, fragments of existences oscillating between being and appearing in a society marked by increasingly fragile and mediated relationships. In "Medea", the artist confronts the ambivalence of primal feelings, showing how even maternal love can turn into a destructive force and generate wounds that are passed on from generation to generation.
The exhibition concludes with "De nexibus quibus mundus capitur" (On the connections by which the world is ensnared), Fermina’s latest project. Here the invisible threads of technology, communication, and consumption materialize as a web enveloping the planet and imprisoning it, making evident the often-ignored cost of our daily choices. It is a work that reflects on the illusions of the present and foreshadows the disillusions of the future, but at the same time invites awareness, offering through art the possibility of looking beyond the surface.

"Nigri corvi parturient albas columbas" is therefore both an anthology and a manifesto: fragments of cycles and visions that, like the tesserae of a mosaic, restore the image of an era marked by broken promises, yet still capable of generating new awareness. In this space suspended between poetry and politics, Fermina’s work becomes an invitation to question our time, to lift the veil of illusion, and perhaps to rediscover a new way of looking toward the future.

The Artist

Magdalena Fermina (Novara, 1968) is a visual artist and performer. She trained at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts in Milan, graduating in Set Design with a thesis on the art of the Makonde people, which she deepened through residencies in Mozambique, and later completed a master’s degree in Visual Arts and Performing Arts, Sculpture track, with research dedicated to Christian Boltanski and Roman Opałka. She has exhibited in numerous Italian and international cities, presenting solo shows in institutions and galleries such as the German Cultural Center in Novara and Banca Sella in Genoa.

Her work has been presented — citing only the most recent group exhibitions — in important venues such as Palazzo Medici Riccardi in Florence, the Civic Marble Museum of Carrara, the Castello delle Polveri on the Island of Certosa in Venice, the Sala delle Pietre in Todi, the Dome of San Gaudenzio in Novara, the Società Umanitaria in Milan, and the Museum of Embroidery and Textile in Valtopina, as well as in international contexts such as the Akaki Tsereteli Central Library in Batumi (Georgia). She has also participated in festivals and fairs including the Borderline Arte Festival in Varallo Sesia and BAF – Bergamo.

Technical Info

Title: Nigri corvi parturient albas columbas
Artist: Magdalena Fermina
Dates: October 18 – November 15, 2025
Opening: Saturday, October 18, 2025, 5:30 p.m.
Venue: SCD Studio, via Bramante 22N, Monteluce; MAD Monteluce Art District, Perugia
Curator: Barbara Pavan
Catalogue: Al3vie Edizioni
Critical texts by: Davide Artico, Lorella Giudici, Luca Vannozzi

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