Sparks is a participatory performance that continues Francesca Grilli’s long-standing investigation into the body and its relationship with different forms of knowledge and experience.
The project is based on a simple but radical gesture: children read the future in the palms of adults’ hands, as an act of hope and a break with the past. Following several days of workshops, a group of children leads adults into a dimly lit space, where they read their palms individually and only once. A space for interpretation and revelation opens up, in which childhood becomes the author of visions and reflections.
The performance revolves around three elements: hands, palm reading and sculptural hats.
At a time when physical contact is often denied, hands become what remains most exposed to the world - a point of contact between generations and a visible trace of existence. Their reading, entrusted to children as a form of play, becomes a space for imagination and desire. The sculptural hats, playful echoes of helmets, mark the beginning of the performance and protect the children from the adults’ direct gaze through their specially designed visors.