UN TEMPO ALTRO (A Different Time): Contemporary Embroidery Art and Pinhole Photography as an Act of Poetic Resistance
From March 28 to April 6, 2026, the Complesso Monumentale di San Domenico in Narni will host the exhibition Un tempo altro – Estetica della lentezza (A Different Time – The Aesthetics of Slowness), curated by Barbara Pavan. The exhibition is presented as part of NARNIMMAGINARIA – Still Moving | Festival Internazionale di Fotografia Stenopeica (NARNIMMAGINARIA – Still Moving | International Pinhole Photography Festival), promoted by Associazione SATOR APS with the patronage of the Comune di Narni.
The exhibition brings pinhole photography and contemporary embroidery into dialogue through a series of works created collaboratively by photographers and embroidery artists, proposing a reflection on the value of slowness as both an aesthetic practice and a cultural gesture of resistance in an age of digital acceleration.
In a context dominated by the instant production and consumption of images, the exhibition recenters techniques that require time, attention, and process. Pinhole photography produces images through extended exposures and essential procedures, restoring to the act of looking a dimension of waiting and discovery. Embroidery – historically associated with the domestic sphere – is presented here as an autonomous artistic language and a conceptual tool capable of intervening in the photographic image as a critical and narrative mark.
The works on display emerge from equal collaborations: each piece combines a pinhole photograph with an embroidered intervention, in which thread becomes an interpretative gesture and an additional temporal trace. Embroidery does not serve a decorative function; rather, it acts as a visual and conceptual extension of the image, emphasizing its layers, memories, and tensions. Un tempo altro invites viewers to engage with a different relationship to the time of making and seeing, and to experience images through a slower, more attentive gaze.
Participating artists: (photography) Maria Francesca Bottari, Diego Cuneo, Pierclaudio Duranti, Riccardo Gazzarri, Luca Guerri, Gianfranco Lunardo, Stefano Marcovaldi, Vincenzo Marzocchini, Mauro Nori, Roberto Pileri, Stefano Rapino, Marco Scataglini, Gloria Vatteroni; (embroidery art) Luciana Aironi, Silvia Beccaria, Manuela Bieri, Susanna Cati, Meri Ciuchi, Cenzo Cocca, Carla Crosio, Rosita D’Agrosa, Magdalena Fermina, Grazia Gallo, Grazia Inserillo, Ilaria Margutti, Sonia Izn Piscicelli, Giulia Santambrogio.
The exhibition opens on Saturday, March 28, 2026, at 11:00 am. At 3:30 pm, a public conversation with the artists and photographers, in dialogue with the curator, will take place in the Sala Bravi at the Complesso ex Brefotrofio del Beata Lucia (Piazza Galeotto Marzio, 6).
