When fashion becomes art: the #backtoart project for the regeneration of beauty

McArthurGlen Noventa di Piave Designer Outlet reaffirms its commitment to the circular economy, art and sustainability with a new project: the installation exhibition Come un manto per le lucciole by the artist Olimpia Biasi.

Presented in Venice, in the foyer of the Goldoni Theatre, the work, commissioned by McArthurGlen Noventa of Piave Designer Outlet thanks to the collaboration with the Fondazione Teatro Stabile del Veneto – Teatro Nazionale, is an impressive tapestry made with a weave of recycled fabrics on mesh industrial 7 meters long and 1.20 meters high.

The project is part of the #backtoart initiatives with which the Group combines artistic valorisation and environmental awareness: a way to channel the energy and regenerative power of art into its world of labour, production and commerce to restore a new form of beauty.

Sustainability is a key value for McArthurGlen which, aware of its impact and responsibility, is committed through its Evolve platform to driving real change for a more equitable and responsible future. A responsibility that starts from the Centres, concretely committed to reducing their footprint, but which also extends to visitors, partners and local communities.

This initiative also draws inspiration from the Recycle your fashion project, in which visitors are involved in a collection of garments intended for upcycling or donation, with the aim of contributing to a circular economy system and inviting guests of the McArthurGlen outlets to do the same to promote a better quality of life and a more equitable use of the resources offered by the territories in which the centers themselves are present.

Olimpia Biasi's tapestry is made by hand weaving, on a malleable metal mesh, various and colorful bands of recycled fabrics, offered to the artist by McArthurGlen Noventa of Piave Designer Outlet and collected as part of Recycle your fashion. The artistic curation is by the art critic Annamaria Orsini who has followed Biasi's work for some time.

The challenge was to go beyond re-use and re-cycle, even in their more ethical meanings, favoring the artist's creative act in carrying out a more powerful experience, generating re-birth and re-generation. As the curator Annamaria Orsini observes, "this work by the artist is generated by a "healing" vision of nature and the desire to regain contact with an ancient and feminine gesture such as weaving and Biasi conceives it as a creature that comes to light by carrying out a saving rite of regeneration; a re-birth that gives new life and beauty to what had been abandoned".

Olimpia Biasi's work will be exhibited primarily at the Goldoni Theater in Venice, until April 29, in conjunction with the major art events that contaminate the lagoon city. Afterwards he will be in Padua, in the foyer of the Teatro Verdi, on the same days in which the artist exhibits at the Eremitani Museums. Finally, it will be exhibited in Treviso, Biasi's hometown, from May 18th at the Teatro Del Monaco.

The opportunity materialized thanks to an important and profitable territorial partnership between McArthurGlen Noventa di Piave Designer Outlet and the Fondazione Teatro Stabile del Veneto – Teatro Nazionale which will make the foyers of its three theaters available for the exhibition. Anyone who goes to purchase a ticket or attend a show will be able to admire and appreciate the tapestry of the artist who paid homage to the places that host his work by also recovering in the weave some fabrics from old armchairs and curtains from the Goldoni theater in Venice, recently renovated.

A reference to the work of Olimpia Biasi is also present at McArthurGlen Noventa by Piave Designer Outlet, with a reproduction of the tapestry accompanied by the key words of the project, in an original game of references and allusions.

As Daniela Bricola, the General Manager of Noventa di Piave Designer Outlet, declared: “The artistic vocation and the attention towards the territories where we have developed our activities represent two elements of great characterization for McArthurGlen. Three years after the previous #backtolife project which had brought together the Noventa di Piave outlet, the designer Carla Plessi and the Casa Famiglia Pio later declining the themes of environmental responsibility in the codes of art to generate new sensitivity and new beauty.”

“We joyfully welcomed the proposal from McArthurGlen, a partner with whom we have already worked with satisfaction, to host in our theaters this opera by Olimpia Biasi dedicated to a theme that is particularly dear to us such as environmental sustainability – declared Claudia Marcolin, general director of the TSV Foundation – National Theater –. As Teatro Stabile del Veneto we have long been committed to actions that reduce our environmental impact, from paper saving to energy efficiency. Promoting, even through an art form other than the theatrical one, a message of care towards the environment and therefore encouraging the diffusion of a culture that contributes to creating public value is an essential objective for us."