SE VENEZIA MUORE
“Se Venezia Muore” is the natural consequence of the performance I carried out on 22 September 2019 at the Rialto Fish Market in Venice named “The “Mute Scream of the Serenissima Dinosaur”. In the performance, a similar artwork to the one presented was created and used (also titled “The Mute Scream of the Sereneissima Dinosaur) and it wanted to be a memento and an alarm for the floating city of Venice and the tumultuous times she is experiencing. In the first line of those who suffer the most from climate change, recently stricken by a devastating high-tide, and now, by the virus, usually asphyxiated by mass tourism, but also slowly loosing her citizens - her soul - this mask is the face and mirror of many societies worldwide that are now living in very difficult and “interesting” times and are slowly dying. It is a scream, a mute scream of what was once strong and full of splendour, the last scream possible to call for a change of route and priorities.
The performance was set at the Rialto Fish Market, once the pulsing commercial hub of the city in which personifies the agonizing spirit of our city and our society. This performance, a sort of particular, macabre dance, was conceived precisely to awaken the pride and consciences of the last Venetians.
On the notes of Casta Diva by Vincenzo Bellini, the dancer Valentin Rosca - premier danseur at the Constantin Tanase Theatre in Bucharest - slowly approached the sacrificial altar bearing on his shoulders the gigantic raw mask, to then lay it on his own lying body. Five other performers stretched a clean, white shroud on the mask. This sacral cloth served me as a canvas, in which I wrote in blood-red, with a bilious and wild gesture - in the manner of the master Emilio Vedova, who has been my professor during my school years at the Academy of Fine Arts - some keywords that summarize the dramatic lacerations experienced by today's Venice: “Guernica of our time, Misunderstood World Heritage Site, drowned in waters, Artisan Reservation, Lagoon SOS, Pay the ticket and take a selfie, Hotel Venezia take away”. “Se Venezia Muore” collects these and other words, as a perennial memorial of the call for actions sent by this performance.
In the performance, when the writing process ended, the mask abruptly jolted, rose, swallowed the shroud and then regurgitated it, staining itself with blood red. In the end, that shroud was hung as a curtain between the columns of the fish market, turning into a potent manifesto of denunciation.
in "other view 1" and "other view 2" it is possible to see two images taken during the performance (photo courtesy: Marika Cecoro).
Technique: assemblage of papier-mâché, iron, resin and acrylic paint
The technique I use in my works draws from modalities and gestures of the past, and from the ancient Venetian papier-mâché tradition.