The Northern light series
PILGRIMS (frame detail) – Single-channel Video installation – 4min 45sec [looped], 535 Mixed media on paper painting set in stop-frame animation. The Northern Light series, Palazzo Ducale, Genoa, Italy, 2020.
THE NORTHERN LIGHT SERIES
“You will live in tents every day, so that you may live long on earth, where you will live as strangers” Bedouin proverb
It was not too long ago that we used to guide our paths with the stars. Nowadays, we live in an extremely complex geographical insubordination, even leading to the concept of « belonging » being questioned almost everywhere. In this sense, water has always been a driver of shaping identities and living environments – towns and, more widely, civilizations have been built along and in strong connection with water bodies. More recently, this relationship, and consequently the physical space of water, is often neglected or perceived as an invisible/intangible element. Living with water also means protecting from extreme events. Water, which should be perceived as a resource, should also be read as a means of negotiation between subjectivities/identities. The water resource is a breaking element in the condition of living. It is representational of a necessity to find ways to live together with the element and its forceless power and mutability. The Northern Light series explores the relationships between processes of territorialization and water(s) geographical identity morphosis. Similar to a liquid in constant motion, the definition of human/in-human finds its transposition within the multitudes of agglomerations that itself is able to include. This series of works represents a venture to redefine a suspended spatial location in an attempt to build up a series of imaginary landscapes evidencing a specific place-making condition.
Ethnology of individualism, a subjectivity of solitudes: a dimension outside of physical time, a metaphor for a temporary, superficial passage. A liquid spatial dimension, in which to be together, but alone. The sets of a lack of terrestrial space will, in turn, become a place. The anonymity of the “non-places” traced is found in solitude, the commonality of human destinies. The proposed portion of (water) space is characterized by the omission of a shared territory, a set of time intervals representing the voids but containing the whole. Displayed through various multimedia compositions, the neglected space of water is proposed through a series of visual poems, embodying a sense of emptiness that becomes the face and voice of millions of forced solitudes. Such Foaucultian spaces of “otherness” embody an absence of awareness of living spaces and shared environments/territories. Those spaces of subjectivation omitted the possible interaction of bodies within their immediate surroundings. Historically, water bodies (rivers/lakes/creeks) marked the differences between “them” and “us”, between different notions of territorial claims. Because of their importance as a primary resource for livelihood, such subjective acts of delimitation have often been misused as legitimate excuses to objectify, overcome, and conquer. The analogy of water and the state of uprooted also concerns the psychological sphere, but precisely for these reasons, it deals with relations between nations and international geopolitical areas. Such as for culture and identity, water does not have fixed delimitations; it morphs constantly following diversified motions in relation to its own terms and geo-climatic conditions. Water bodies possess their own borders.
_______________________________________________________________________________
PILGRIMS – Single-channel Video installation – 4min 45sec [looped] The Northern Light series, Palazzo Ducale, Genoa(IT) 2020.
IN UN TEMPO NON TROPPO LONTANO CI LASCIAVAMO GUIDARE DALLE STELLE – Single-channel video essay installation on cathode ray tube screen – The Northern Light series, Palazzo Ducale, Genoa(IT) 2020.
THE PILGRIMAGE OF HUMANITY II / XIV – Framed mixed media on cotton paper 300gr, various sizes. 2019/2022.
THE PILGRIMAGE OF HUMANITY – “The third space”, Ring Gallery / Mestrovic Pavilion, Zagreb (HR), 2019.