Ana Silva: Eau

The Angolan-Portuguese artist Ana Silva is inaugurating Eau at the GAMeC in Bergamo. This is her first solo exhibition at the Italian institution.

Eau presents a new body of work by the artist, whose practice relies on textiles as a field of memory, social critique, and the reinvention of materials.

Her pieces originate from a traditional African form of embroidery historically carried out exclusively by men on the continent. By manually intervening in these surfaces and taking on the role of embroiderer herself, Ana performs a symbolic inversion of the original gesture, introducing layers of memory and authorship.

In Eau, Ana works in collaboration with embroiderers from the Bergamo region, deepening her investigation into the global water crisis. The result is a set of works that expose inequality in access to water, juxtaposing the subtlety of embroidery with the urgency of the theme.

The exhibition marks a moment of transition between two of the museum’s curatorial frameworks and connects to Pedagogy of Hope, a program dedicated to the formative and transformative role of art, developed collaboratively between GAMeC’s Education Department and curatorial team.