Biennale Internazionale d’Arte di Palermo, Palermo
Presented at the inaugural Palermo Biennale, The Duality introduced Beba’s refined interplay between movement and stillness—an exploration of identity expressed through the tension of color, gesture, and line.
At the 1st Biennale Internazionale d’Arte di Palermo in 2013, Beba’s work entered an important institutional context, marking her transition from independent exhibitions and international fairs to a formally curated European biennale. The selected work, The Duality, encapsulated the essence of her practice at the time: a distillation of motion, elegance, and psychological nuance into a single, fluid figure.
The Biennale’s curatorial committee emphasized artistic relevance and innovation across contemporary drawing, painting, and experimental media. Within this framework, Beba’s contribution stood out for its clarity of gesture and disciplined expressiveness. Her figure, composed of fine linear structures and a sweeping chromatic form, appears suspended between two states—weightlessness and gravity, presence and disappearance. The work’s curved bands of purple, yellow, and pink evoke a kinetic pulse, while the minimal figure above them remains ethereal, almost vapor-like.
Displayed among a diverse international selection, The Duality offered a counterpoint to heavier aesthetic directions of the Biennale. Where many artists foregrounded density or materiality, Beba brought lightness, rhythm, and emotional architecture. Her participation resulted in recognition for artistic relevance, recorded in the Biennale’s general catalogue and accompanied by an official diploma.
For Beba’s trajectory, Palermo 2013 became a foundational institutional milestone—an early affirmation of the precision, elegance, and poetic clarity that continue to define her work.
Mementos
