Guest artist of the 2020/2021 edition of the ROSE Residency Programme, a particularly complex one due to the pandemic emergency from Covid-19 that has upset the programming of museums around the world since the beginning of 2020, was Helen Dowling (Guernsey, 1982).

The training and creative path conceived by the British artist was carried out during her stay in Bologna which lasted seven weeks, between October and November 2020, as a guest of the Sandra Natali Artist Residence.

Helen Dowling's multidisciplinary practice analyses the structures of digital and video language. In her work, stock footage and personally shot footage are combined to create works with an intimate, enveloping effect, where the line between reality and imagination blurs. In the editing process, colour, movement, rhythm and sound interact mixing different levels of meaning and creating new associations of images and new potential narrative developments.
Interested in the opportunity offered by the ROSE Residencies Programme to carry out an original project in close connection with the cultural heritage of the city of Bologna, her proposal was a reflection rooted in a functional analysis of digital content and in the observation and scientific representation of the human body.

The project had its final outcome in the exhibition curated by Giulia Pezzoli presented at Villa delle Rose from 7 May to 6 June 2021, entitled Something for the Ivory.