MALIA (SIGNED AND NUMBERED, edt of 3)

Laura Rodari
MALIA (SIGNED AND NUMBERED, edt of 3)

Photographs: Laura Rodari

Publisher: Self-published

90 pages

Year: 2023

Price: 2000 €

Comments: Softcover, 26 x 19 cm, b&w original photographs from the dark room. Artist's edition of 3 copies. Each book is unique, hand bound and different in editing and prints. Numbered and signed by Laura Rodari.

As Laura Rodari describes it, in August 2012 she had this dream, but it was one of those rare dreams that distress the sleep and disturb the awaking even more so. Pivotal, magnetic, the kind of dream that she describes “opens up unrealised scenarios by releasing the demons”. And so it was. In October 2019 she went there.

‘Malìa' is one of those rare Italian words that are too transiently sculptured with potent possibility and resonance to specifically decipher, define and fix. Very approximately though, it means ‘spell', but one that has negative implications or dark connotations, a spell of shades and portent. The sirens are a good example of this, they embody a shadow magnetised song, a chant of fantastical poetry sung in dark voices that spell binds men (sailors), driving them into trance states and downwards into the depths of oblivion. In another sense, ‘Malia' is said to be like an invisible dark thread, chain, or rope that tethers and binds something or someone.
‘Malìa' also can be described to have this mysterious ability to achieve unusual and disconcerting effects (and not necessarily through deliberate magical practise or the occult), oftentimes inconspicuously and subtly to begin with making the ‘malia' all the more ensnaring. One is aware of an ‘effect' , something that has been internalised transforming seemingly everything on the outside. Something has happened, but one isn't sure what, when or how. One has difficulty defining it, one has a sense of a kind, but that's about it.
In short, ‘Malia' is enchantment, it's charm, it's the flickering of shadows hence it's also the light source, it's the glow, it's the song that drowns the listener, it's the power of seduction. It's what's left behind. It's when it's over.

- O.PF