On body (and soul) of women - from Alessandra Redaelli This is a complex historical moment to talk about women. Leafing through the newspapers, we find ourselves faced with a bleak panorama. You are besieged by armies of little girls who, as their only dowry, have a pleasant face and a nice pair of legs, but who defiantly stare at the viewer posing as icons of style, role models, so painfully bundled up in squeezed dresses, hoisted on stroller heels, adorned with hypertrophic and designer accessories. A coarse laugh buried years of feminist battles, marches and claims. And we, the middle generation, find ourselves lost today, poised between barricaded mothers and dangerously glamorous and doll-dolling pre-adolescent daughters; the mothers from whom we stole the latest issue of Amica to secretly read Barbara Alberti's letter column and the daughters who steal our cosmetics to look like the tissue of the moment. So it becomes terribly complicated today to think of an exhibition on women. Which woman, first of all? Chrysalis, female wrappings is a reflection that from the body, the wrapping, descends to the depths of the woman's soul. A shy woman, perhaps frightened since she is living is the one who offers us only a hint of profile in the works of Cristina Iotti. They are very current, the girls of Cristina, in jeans and trendy blouses. But they hide an ancient, timeless soul in their denial of a direct, too indiscreet gaze, in taking refuge against those floral backgrounds until they blend in with them. A mimesis in progress, barely perceptible, which is revealed in the light continuation of the decoration, like a tattoo, on the skin. Cristina Iotti is a virtuoso of drawing. In the use of colored pencils you have reached, in recent years, an ability that leaves you amazed. The details of her hair, the soft strands escaping the complicated hairstyles, are rendered with photographic precision. As well as the grain of her skin, its very slight change of color on a bare back, constricted by a thin shoulder strap. Over her time, her girls have changed. Before they were faceless bodies lost on neutral backgrounds, sometimes even empty, almost a floating nothingness. Gradually the heads were defined. Rigorously turned, however, to deny the face to allow only the nape. Today girls are starting to dare more. Some show themselves, even if only the forehead is in the foreground and the eyes remain excluded, lowered. Someone else grants a glimpse of the face and looks off the field. Only one decisively raises her gaze towards the viewer. But it's not authentic security, hers. Rather a provocation, a gamble. Witness the oblique smile, vaguely arrogant, and the rebel tuft standing on the forehead. (…)

Alessandra Redaelli From the text in the catalog of the exhibition "Chrysalis - female wraps" Galleria ENTROTERRA, Brescia