LE 33 FATICHE DI ELISA

"LE 33 FATICHE DI ELISA" ("The 33 labours of Elisa") is an installation composed of 10 pillows of different shapes and dimensions, derived from some reference modules on which have been sewed some altimetries, hand-embroidered on some particular kind of cloth, called “aida”. This kind of cloth is the main support for the counted embroidery, a technique which is the basis of cross stitch. Actually, its weave is not cloth but a small framework that forms a thin squared grid to make embroidering easy.
"LE 33 FATICHE DI ELISA" ("The 33 labours of Elisa") refers to some exhausting and demanding distance or course that Elisa covered over 10 months during some races; the number of the pillows coincides with the number on the months she spent to run.
The pillows with their softness represent the sense of rest that opposes the effort Elisa faced up to over the 10 months during the 33 races.
The title of the installation remind the title of a work of Greek mythology: “The 12 labours of Hercules”, consisting of a series of episodes, gathered in a single tale afterwards.
Just like Hercules, Elisa had to undertake a nearly cathartic challenge, which is over the simple gesture of facing up to the routes. This kind of purification or spiritual path, was not over within the end of the 10 months and the 33 runs, but went on, since the last ones needed to be run along again and told by a single installation through the patient embroidery that Elisa decided to execute as a form of cure.

http://www.elisarossini.it/le-33-fatiche-di-elisa/