After studying at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts in Milan, Enrica Borghi began exhibiting in the 1990s, either by using photography as a means of expression or by creating anthropomorphic installations made from recycled materials such as candy wrappers and chocolates, supermarket plastic bags and various other materials that are in themselves non-biodegradable waste. With these waste materials she makes Venuses, which are copies of classical statues covered with false nails or curlers. Her artistic research focuses on the use of recycled materials drawn from what is conventionally considered the female universe. Attention both to these materials and to the oneiric component of the feminine and domestic world are the subjects referred to in ‘The Queen, an installation for children’, a dress of gigantic dimensions that evokes fairy-tale queens but soon reveals other secret paths to the visitor. A work made using over five thousand discarded plastic bottles and an incalculable quantity of plastic bags. The final result is a gigantic dress-installation, in which the discards of consumerism become precious fabrics, and which evokes, with its mysterious presence, the character of fairy-tale iconography.