Bianchi Lina - AdLibitum TestaCuore

The title echoes the original meaning of the Latin expression ad libitum – “at pleasure”, “voluntarily”, “at discretion” – suggesting the freedom to follow different paths, without predefined hierarchies between what springs from the mind and what emerges from feeling. The two panels can live autonomously as independent works, but they find their most complete meaning in their mutual dialogue: only when juxtaposed do they fully reveal their nature and narrative tension.

Botanical forms traverse both surfaces, creating visual and conceptual continuity. Part of the image is obtained through direct wood carving, while the other is entrusted to painting. This technical difference generates a perceptual duality: what is carved appears as a deeper trace, almost sedimented in the material, while what is painted emerges on the surface, visible and immediate. The two dimensions reflect and complement each other.

AdLibitum TestaCuore is a diptych that reflects on the relationship between interiority and manifestation, depth and surface, thought and emotion.

Fragments of text, graphic marks, and chromatic overlays build a complex and stratified surface, inviting the viewer to a slow and personal reading. Words do not offer themselves completely to the gaze, but become clues to reassemble, leaving room for individual interpretation.

Rendered in acrylic on wood by means of manual carving and tape masking, *AdLibitum TestaCuore* is a unique piece signed by Lina Bianchi | Interno7_LinaBi. The work belongs to a research project that uses botany as a symbolic language to investigate transformation, relation, and the complexity of human experience.