A causa della gravità non sta su

The period of the worst of the pandemic was filled with false hope and hollow positivity that hid the truth about how this situation extremely exposed how problematic our established societal structure really is, exacerbating already extenuating circumstances for the most vulnerable, especially women as they were the ones that lost the most jobs and in some cases were trapped victims of domestic abuse during the lockdown. DeBlassie created a delicate rainbow of clothespins hung up by two clothing lines to reference two ideas: the domestic labor traditionally assigned to women, and the cloth signs that hung from clothing lines in Italy in the beginning of the pandemic with colorful rainbows painted by children with the phrase “Andrà tutto bene.”  Although the action of hanging these cloth signs was meant to inspire a sense of optimism especially for youths, it was also a reminder of how this positivity in the face of total collapse can encourage us to push aside the harsh reality of what was happening; whereas, if the brutal truth is acknowledged which seems negative, it can actually have more positive results and genuine or meaningful change can occur or get generated. By using clothespins to create a rainbow that deprives them of their normal domestic duty of holding the clothes to dry, disrupting notions of its functionality via the transformation of objects, DeBlassie aims to also disrupt expectations of false hope in favor of reality to create real societal transformation.