Our exhibition in a bottle is in Rome, installed by curator Manuela Pacella in her home. Manuela has a deep interest in the the history and art of Northern Ireland, since curating the Patria Interiore / Inner Homeland exhibition here at the GTG in 2012, and then being selected in 2013 for the ICI’s Curatorial Intensive at the CCA in Derry and for the International Residency at Flax Art Studios in Belfast.

Manuela documented her version of ‘Not Alone’ on Instagram, and shared her thoughts on having pieces of Belfast with her again. This is her essay about Sharon Kelly‘s ‘Sutured‘ 2020 piece.


“Among the last activities carried out before the lockdown was a studio visit to the British School at Rome at the newly arrived Sharon Kelly, from Belfast, whose light but rather tough sculpture in scrim and red thread I just set up. The anatomical parts remind me of the ones she was drawing at the studio in Rome. […] she spoke of portions of gestures of caring, of caring for each other and I saw so much disease. ‘Sutured’ is now on a small passing way of my house; portions of fabric are connected to each other to form parts of a body through a fiery red thread, at times the same features of arteries; I still see, in that red thread that joins a real suture, a desire to put back together the shards of a vase broken too many years ago. […] My home is now your home. But my home has become sacred since I missed it more than human contact, since I risked seeing it either a few hundred meters away from me, since I know my parents will never see it again, since I decided to take care of it as if it were full of sutures still red, like those of Sharon’s thread, my first artist met after months of forced separation from my previous life and last contact that preceded a global isolation.”

At the end of this week, Manuela will pack the exhibition up and send it on to the next curator – but it’s not going so far this time, just across the city to curator Micol di Veroli!

Follow Not Alone’s journey on our Instagram.