The mask, sign, symbol, emblem, or ensign, is the theme of this series of highly visually impactful works, with their... Read More
The mask, sign, symbol, emblem, or ensign, is the theme of
this series of highly visually impactful works, with their sharp evocation of
the tragic daily reality of migration.
Their numerical title, whose precision offers a counterpoint
to the nameless identities they conceal, is an explicit reference to the
countless geographical coordinates of places that have been the site of
significant events, leading to a re-emergence, a manifestation, of what
otherwise would have been lost.
Their material aspect is therefore just as important:
through their metallic consistency and their encrusted surface, the artist
gives both life and tangible corporeality to the memory of wrecks that have
emerged from the depths, remembering lives that were tarnished by the salty
touch of seawater.
Divided between a lower section, the submerged part, shiny
and almost liquid, and a ferrous, coarse upper section, the composition of
these masks evokes the duality of existence, and the binomials of sea and
earth, life and death, without however becoming fully contained and limited by
them: the work itself, thanks to its shape, is able to exceed the boundaries of
the background, extending towards the space above and around itself.
The purposefully acid, fluorescent, harshly dissonant
colours assault and challenge the viewer, becoming almost unpleasant.
These are violent colours, and so is the affirmation of the
existence and life of those people who, having sunk to the depths, have found a
way of manifesting themselves, making themselves present, through the
innumerable, screaming eyes of a mask.
