Monica De Mitri, an artist who works with forms of painting-sculpture-installation which take her art beyond defined schemes, as an activity which appears more accessible and recognisable, the result of an idea of belonging to a kind of every-day existentialism. As an artist who, with clarity of vision, does not pretend to be a vehicle for grand statements, revolutionary ideals, or a salvific centrality of artistic activity, she instead considers her work to be an activity integrated with others which characterise her sentiments, her attitude and her daily way of life. Thus her artistic interests, which originate from her studies, her work in the world of fashion, her involvement in the organisation of artistic and cultural events with the Mantova Creativa Association, also reflect the fundamental components and the multitude of features of an art which originates from her life, which follows her inclinations, which adheres to her existence like a tailor-made dress, and which is thus difficult to classify, escaping traditional distinctions. Her work is neither painting, nor sculpture, nor an object, nor installation in the strict sense of the words; from time to time these categories can seem more like possibilities and potential for her work, with the prevalence of one, or another, not so much derived from clear distinctions, but directly from the idea of a fine, detailed, patient, and studied work of excellence. A work which clearly display the creative process, declaring it explicitly: a work with paints and inks, but also with scissors, glue, thread, recycled paper either simply painted or enhanced with other strips of paper or drops of glass or fragments of coloured crystal, expressing the simplicity of the materials found and seeming to mimic fabrics or evoke decorative elements, forms of tasteful accessories from the world of fashion. Small items, small relics found not only in an archaeological study of fashion, but also from the worlds of nature and culture, such as when, for example, fragments of paper are drip painted or with squares within squares, adhering to a suprematist influence, or in monochromatic tables composed according to geometries of abstract and constructive memories but which come together in a form which has a transient and contingent feel. It is as though the artist wishes to allow us to experience the subtle pleasure of her initial seeking, finding, collecting, conserving, keeping, and thus wants to set in a time and place that which is temporary and ephemeral, that which had been cast away and which she recovers and transforms in a desire to freeze and define every one of the most subtle and minute emotions, also showing sensitivity for the modest materials she discovers. She seems intent on revealing and applying their hidden beauty, while at the same time maintaining the sense of a dynamic contingency, above all in her suspended papers, or in her airy and almost precarious compositions of fragments of cut paper held together by the unifying elements of paint and glue, fragments cut and recomposed on surfaces which seem almost ready to change configuration or to scatter with the slightest breeze. De Mitri appears to suggest that these objects have a soul, and that the artist is simply the instrument which allows them to emerge. Her works stimulate our capacity to feel the sensuality of materials through tactuality as well as visuality, a sensitivity which is more refined and suited to perceiving the most subtle shades: painting transformed into an object. A kind of artistic “ready-made”, a sort of art discovered and implicit within the materials and their forms. The artist adapts to the materials according to a sensitivity in which interference and contamination from culture and nature, fashion and memory, both temporary and permanent, factually interweave their fibres, their textures.