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The Aftermath of Communication: Carmela De Falco and “Listening with Eyes, Watching with Ears”

The Aftermath of Communication: Carmela De Falco and “Listening with Eyes, Watching with Ears”

What remains when the symbols that organize an order, a space, or a society slowly slip out of place? A bell, though stripped of its function, still looks like a bell. A public square, though it has lost its former meaning, is still a square. But what do these remaining forms tell us when the conditions that brought those objects into existence disappear?

Italian artist Carmela De Falco lands on the no-26 radar this time with a fascinating conceptual inquiry. The artist’s solo exhibition, titled Listening with Eyes, Watching with Ears, focuses on the world of objects whose forms appear completely intact but whose functions have become ambiguous. Bells, eyelids, knots, and repeated melodies confront us at an uncanny threshold where they can no longer guarantee the worlds they once brought into being.

With curatorial text penned by Maria Valeria Biondo, the exhibition begins precisely where certainty ends: in that void between a signal and the destination it reaches, a gesture and its repetition, a sign and the world that sign holds together…

Silent Testimonies of Objects

Three primary works standing out in the exhibition clearly demonstrate how De Falco manipulates the intersections between language, material, and collective memory:

signal (2026): Hanging silently down into the gallery space, this is a chain of Roman bells produced from resin via a 3D printer. The current silence of these bells—which for centuries heralded transitions, arrivals, and gatherings—does not destroy their capacity to communicate; on the contrary, it leaves this function completely naked. Stripped of the events they were tasked to announce, the bells no longer hang as tools, but as material evidence of the past.
looking (2026): Cast from the eyelids of the artist’s mother, this small sculpture introduces an unexpected hesitation into the act of seeing. The eye is there, standing before us as a form; yet it no longer promises to see or to show anything. This moment where the gaze is interrupted leaves the viewer alone with their own perception.
song for the square (2026): In this 9-minute video work brought to life by the performance of Kirsty Ferguson-Lewis, a singer in a public square continuously repeats a fragment from The Beatles’ song I Me Mine. The sentence cuts through the square over and over again. Although nothing seems to change at first, the relentless repetition severs the words from the song they belong to. Ceasing to be a lyric, this excerpt becomes a rhythmic mantra, weaving a brand-new circle of focus and perception around itself.

No form directly represents an event. Each survives as the material residue of that event. A meteorite leaves a crater behind, a shoelace turns into a knot, and a sentence establishes its own life through repetition.

About Carmela De Falco

Born in Naples in 1994, where she still continues her work, Carmela De Falco examines the physical and mental spaces experienced by communities and individuals. Known for her research that subverts coded cultural systems, the artist graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Naples and subsequently studied in prominent European art centers such as Dijon, Munich, and Paris.

Following group exhibitions at prestigious institutions and galleries like the Madre Museum and Alfonso Artiaco, De Falco is currently continuing her productions as part of the artist-in-residence program at the Institut français and Cité internationale des arts in Paris (April 2026 – April 2027).

The bell is still a bell, the eye is still an eye, and the knot is a knot… Yet something in their operations has already shifted. To witness this transformation, remember to add this exhibition to your diary until July 19, 2026.