The Artwork

In the early 19th century, two extraordinary Italian women—two brilliant ballerinas—danced on pointe for the first time, sparking a true revolution in the world of dance. Their innovation inspired not only the very creation of 19th-century ballets, but also generations of great artists in the years to follow.

In the film The Red Shoes, these shoes—also known simply as “pointe shoes”—become a symbol of tragedy.
It was only less than a decade ago that pointe shoes began to be produced specifically for Black ballerinas. Long-standing resistance to altering the traditional image of the classical dancer meant that these shoes, now made in a variety of skin tones, represent a significant cultural shift underway.

Today, red shoes have entered the collective imagination as a symbol of the fight for women’s rights.
Through the story of these shoes—caught in a symbolic duality between revolution and sorrow—this work by Silvia Rastelli reflects their enduring power and invites us to imagine "On Pointe."

The Artist

Silvia Rastelli, a second-generation artist, spent her childhood in the studio of her father, a sculptor.
As she grew up, she cultivated a deep, cross-disciplinary passion for the arts—particularly dance and visual art—eventually earning a degree in Painting and a second degree in Contemporary Art Studies at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts in Milan.

She “steals” wood—the preferred medium of her father—and transforms it into a bridge between memory and modernity.
Primarily a portraitist, Silvia interprets the human face as if it were a geographic landscape, rising from the unconscious and reshaped into faces that resemble the contours of nations—places and vessels of diverse cultures and ways of life. The subjects of her portraits, these muses, become symbols of a longed-for season of liberation from racial intolerance.

Silvia Rastelli is a dancer, art performer, and painter whose work has been widely exhibited both in Italy and internationally (Kyiv, Paris, London), and presented by renowned art curators including her longtime mentor Fortunato D’Amico (curator of Michelangelo Pistoletto and Ercole Pignatelli), as well as Luciano Bolzoni, Stefano Fugazza, Francesco Poli, Silvia Fabbri, Daniele Usellini, Loris Zanrei, Maria Flora Giubilei, Carlo Francou, and many others.

Today, Silvia lives in the countryside of Piacenza, where she continues to nurture her passion for the arts every day.