The white horse, pregnant
Mariano Cuofano’s exhibition design for The white horse, pregnant brings Patricia Domínguez’s moving-image works into the sixteenth-century cloister of Santa Caterina a Formiello in Naples. The installation establishes a sequence of coloured thresholds within the existing arcade, using translucent surfaces, metal frames and LED light to connect the scale of the artworks with the architecture of the cloister.
The project developed through dialogue with the artist, translating her colours and imagery into printed polycarbonate elements. Curved and polygonal silhouettes form a family of supports and backdrops around the exhibition. Set against the stone columns and weathered walls, their precise outlines give each encounter a distinct position within the larger space.
Several panels occupy the openings between columns. Their translucency allows figures and light to register through the coloured surfaces, changing with the visitor’s position. Seen from one side, a panel reads as an architectural plane; from another, it becomes a luminous backdrop or a screen for a passing silhouette. The arcade is experienced through this alternation between direct views, filtered images and partial concealment.
Artificial light adds a second register to the material. LED lines trace the geometry of individual elements and cast colour onto the surrounding surfaces. In daylight, the installation can be read alongside the arches, frescoes and central timber structure. As ambient light falls, the illuminated outlines become more prominent, turning the perimeter into a succession of concentrated visual fields.
A white video box occupies the centre of the courtyard. Its compact volume provides a different spatial condition from the open arcade: an enclosed setting for viewing within the larger covered space. The relationship between this central room and the dispersed elements around the edges gives the exhibition two complementary rhythms, moving between an interior and a sequence of thresholds.
Domínguez’s six videos are presented through shrines devoted to Water, Earth, Animals, Plants and the Invisible. The exhibition design supports this constellation through differences in geometry, colour and viewing distance, while keeping the existing cloister legible. The resulting environment holds the artist’s sculptural and digital worlds within an architectural sequence shaped by movement, light and changing degrees of visibility.
