30 minutes performance
100 printed and embroidered cotton artefacts 30 x 30 cm each, satin ribbons;
3 photographs, digital print, 15 x 15 cm each
video, color, sound 2’ 43
100 printed and embroidered cotton artefacts 30 x 30 cm each, satin ribbons;
3 photographs, digital print, 15 x 15 cm each
video, color, sound 2’ 43
The work is entitled Private Space (Spazio privato), and the italian term ‘privato’ is taken in its two meanings: as an adjective (‘belonging to the individual’) and as the past participle of the verb ‘to deprive’ (‘stripped, dispossessed’). Marking or painting private property without permission is considered, by owners and authorities, an act of defacement and vandalism. Graffiti, visually understood as a problem, is the subject of the photographic archive behind Spazio privato: one hundred images depicting tiny portions of graffiti on the walls of Milan. They are therefore details of urban painting, which, doubly deprived of context and the completeness of the sign, lose their initial meaning, subordinated to legibility, only to regain a new one, due to free reconfigurations of an ambiguous character, between cipher and decoration.
The photographic images were in fact post-produced and converted to black and white to define a homogeneous alphabet of signs. These one hundred signs, printed on fabric, then cut, sewn and embroidered into square modules with ribbons on each side, can be knotted together in a variable manner, giving rise to thousands of possible combinations. The side-by-side artefacts organise themselves in space and delineate a shape opening up to one or more readings.
The Spazio privato project revolves around two installations: one private and one public. The work on display includes both: a video and a photographic triptych document the private action, while a performance constitutes the public action.
The video presents the words exchanged between me and the owner of the house where the action took place. The request was to empty a room in the house (the living room) to make space for the composition of Private Space, carried out by the inhabitants of the house itself. In practice, what I proposed was a dialogue of a spatial and material nature, consisting of the extension of fabric modules interwoven with each other.
The photographs depict three moments of the “private” installation: the central area of the room stripped of objects and furniture, with the modules stacked on the table; the inhabitants of the house busy weaving the modules; the private space of furniture filled with signs, with the owners sitting at the table.
The video presents the words exchanged between me and the owner of the house where the action took place. The request was to empty a room in the house (the living room) to make space for the composition of Private Space, carried out by the inhabitants of the house itself. In practice, what I proposed was a dialogue of a spatial and material nature, consisting of the extension of fabric modules interwoven with each other.
The photographs depict three moments of the “private” installation: the central area of the room stripped of objects and furniture, with the modules stacked on the table; the inhabitants of the house busy weaving the modules; the private space of furniture filled with signs, with the owners sitting at the table.
The public installation gave rise to a performance in which two moments can be identified. During the first, form is explored, the how. The modules are interwoven. The interweaving of the portions brings with it a grammar, rules that reveal from time to time that the module has two sides with opposite characteristics. Once the intertwining is complete, a configuration and its reverse emerge: on one side, the recombination of figures from graffiti; on the other, the variation of patterns from fabric remnants, the legacy of previous works, sewn underneath like a pillowcase. Two different abstractions.
A hole between the modules suggests the wearability of the artefact (this is what it is, but not what it will be in a possible future installation). Thus begins the second act: crawling prone under the carpet, I reach the hole where my head can slip through and transform the horizontal nature of the artefact into a garment that aspires to be worn. The joined portions define an above and a below (when placed on the ground), an outside and an inside (when worn). The action ends with the artefact being turned over to reveal the underside and the inside.
Lo spazio soggettivo attraversa i muri delle case
(Subjective space crosses the walls of houses)
Exhibition lecture
curated by Pasquale Polidori
Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera, Milano
20.06.2023
(Subjective space crosses the walls of houses)
Exhibition lecture
curated by Pasquale Polidori
Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera, Milano
20.06.2023
