Flying Carpet is serie of 21 photographs.

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The project is the result of a collaborative effort between Fondation A Stichting and De Wereldbrug Primary School, taking inspiration from Cesare Fabbri’s work and his exhibition Flying Carpet at Fondation A in January 2017. The series of photographs is imbued with a sense of poetic exploration, drawing from Fabbri’s thematic focus on the intersection between reality and imagination. Through the playful and imaginative lens of children, the project captures moments of lightness, where the ordinary transforms into something dreamlike, much like the weightless flight of a "flying carpet."

 

 

This theme of lightness also echoes the philosophical musings of Italo Calvino, particularly his reflections on the tension between lightness and heaviness in his Six Memos for the Next Millennium. In his writings, Calvino invokes a scene from Boccaccio’s Decameron, where the character Cavalcante Cavalcanti, in a single graceful leap, escapes a group of threatening nobles by nimbly jumping over a gravestone. Calvino’s fascination with this moment lies in the way it visually conveys the idea of liberation through lightness: Cavalcanti, “being so very light,” defies the gravity of both the physical world and the dangers that pursue him, transcending the weight of reality with a movement as delicate as a feather.

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In the context of this photographic series, Calvino’s notion of lightness versus heaviness becomes a central theme. The children, through their uninhibited play and spontaneous interactions, embody the very essence of lightness that Calvino describes. Their natural ability to immerse themselves in imaginative worlds serves as a metaphorical leap away from the heaviness of the world, much like Cavalcanti’s graceful escape. Through these images, the viewer is invited to reflect on the idea that what lies at the core of human experience is not the burdens of life, but the possibility of lightness—the ability to rise above, to dream, and to imagine.

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