NP-ArtLab presents Devices of Memory, an exhibition that brings together two different artistic practices in an intimate and layered dialogue about memory, emotional trauma, and inner transformation.
The exhibition connects two works that, although using different materials and languages, share the same goal: giving shape to memory and its changes. On one side, ProjeRicordi by Mengfan Wang (Beijing, 2000); on the other, testimone 1, 2, 3, 4 by Margherita Pedrotta (Ivrea, 1998). These two artistic paths cross to explore the line between what remains and what is lost over time.

In her photographic project, Mengfan Wang explores trauma and memory through images of natural landscapes. She uses an experimental technique called film soup, where the film is treated with substances like vodka and lemon. The result is dreamlike and unstable photographs, where the chemical reaction becomes a metaphor for the mind. The images, marked by corrosion and color changes, suggest fragments of distorted memories, halfway between reality and forgetfulness. Natural subjects — trees, flowers, animals — appear as silent presences, witnesses of an inner time, suspended between staying and disappearing.

Alongside these visions is the installation work of Margherita Pedrotta, who reflects on how matter changes as a symbol of emotional processes. In testimone 1, 2, 3, 4, four metal containers hold bouquets made of artificial materials — plaster, water, butadiene — which go through repeated freezing and thawing cycles. The slow melting of the ice, heard through sound, creates an expanded sense of time, where remembering faces its inevitable transformation. Even if not alive, the flowers tell stories of love and absence, becoming ritual, fragile carriers of emotional memory.

Though different, the two works reflect each other: both show that memory is not something fixed, but always in motion. In Wang’s altered landscapes and in Pedrotta’s melting materials, memory does not stay unchanged — it transforms, fades, and reveals itself through change. It is a living, vulnerable body that filters emotions, holds traces, but also resists and dissolves.

The exhibition becomes a sensory and symbolic journey, where memory is seen as a process, not just an archive. It is an emotional threshold where matter and imagination meet, telling what remains, what changes, and what — perhaps — can no longer be remembered.

IT



ARTISTS 

Mengfan Wang
Margherita Pedrotta