Sete

The Sete (Thirst) exhibition and the Acque dentro (Waters inside) performance are part of an artistic project that explores a widespread intelligence of the body through imagery that ranges from marine elements to atmospheric agents, and from physical to social needs. Conceived in two parts, the project is an accelerator of tactile, visual and conceptual stimuli that connect individual and collective dimensions.

On display there are two series of porcelain wall works – the first has the bright colours of the third-firing technique; the others are contaminated with glass or pierced by squid bones. The squid bones look like plastic feathers and, like the sculptures in the shape of octopus beaks used in the performance, are perhaps witnesses to a distant time in history in which the creatures of the sky and sea found each other, united on the path of evolution.

The works thus reconfigure primitive legends and the mythopoetic unconscious of the artist, permeated by a heroic note whose fulcrum is always a body – often female – fluid and porous, engraved with archaic signs and penetrated by foreign elements, the effect of artistic experimentation. Sometimes the body almost disappears; it collapses in an osmosis with nature – atmospheric and organic – which overturns the relationship between its inside and outside, dragging it along and cancelling its distinctive features, as it rolls on the porcelain board.

Acque dentro 

The performance Acque Dentro, produces unusual physical experiences, aimed at activating forms of knowledge considered residual in contemporary society. One involves the body of performers, music and dance students from the Polo delle Arti Caselli Palizzi. This is public and dictates the duration of the event, while the other involves the visitors, who are offered the possibility to have a porcelain miniature in their mouth, one that cannot be seen or touched before accepting to participate, a work of art but also a device to accentuate their physical presence, the here and now.

The tiny sculptures are modelled on the shape of octopus beaks which in Italian are often called “octopus eyes”. Octopus beaks are similar to miniature bird beaks and are the only element of hard cartilage in the body of an otherwise boneless creature that lives on the seabed, in dark areas that are difficult for humans to access. Thus, in the dim light of the Party Hall, obtained using only the original lighting inspired by the old candelabra, some visitors decide to participate in the performance while others observe – but both look at each other and move together, incognito, with social and behavioral implications in the space shared with the group of dancers and musicians. The latter, however, interacts only in pairs, interpreting – in a sort of evolutionary or learning time-lapse – possible forms of communication, in dialogue with their own bodies and those of others, but also with musical instruments.

The performance thus creates an internal experience and progressively brings it out until it is made public. At the same time, it questions the hegemony of the society of images, the idea of a reality filtered almost exclusively by the eyes and not by the other senses, and asserts a multisensory approach to the work of art. With Acque dentro, Gaia Fugazza thus emancipates visitors from language, an instrument of rational thought, and brings them back to the playful dimension of knowing, that of children who touch and put objects in their mouths, imitating and reacting, informed by the relational dimension of growing up together.

Text by Sara Dolfi Agostini