What is this work about, I ask myself when looking in the eyes of people, taken quite abash at the look of it.
I write all this in a language that is not mine. Maybe because the language that is not mine gives me more freedom. I don´t need to be perfect in expression or vocabulary “it’s not my language”
I can feel poetic “it’s not my language”
I can follow my intuition “it’s not my language”
I can fail orthography “it’s not my language”
I can create words that don’t exist “it’s not my language”
When I speak a language that is not mine I feel strong and free, I can allow myself to fail, I can be stupid or funny and there is no fear. The columns “Le colonne” as I want to call them are a new language for me. They are something that happened, unexpected and magical. A language that is not mine yet.
Le colonne are textile sculptures, each colonna is made of the clothes of one person. The first one, Me, is made out of old clothes I cannot wear anymore. Clothes that were important once, clothes that were the language of appearance, once, but are not this language anymore. For various reasons this language of appearance has changed. Change of body, change of mind, change of social position, change of workplace, change of physical momentum
So I take this “skin” like the skin of a snake and transform it into a column, a tree, a totem. A memory to the language that was, a memory that can be touched, embraced, hugged. A testimony to change, nothing sad just something to gain awareness. A letter written in another language. Or better a letter dictated to a machine that does not speak , that does not understand the words but diligently writes down all the sounds you make.
The form happens, it is not deliberate, I just compress by sawing all the clothes knotted around a center and a heavy base. I started by chance not wanting to throw away certain clothes, a skin that had meant something to me, that was too worn out to be owned by someone else and that I did not want to end up in a landfill or in a furnace. So I decided to make a sculpture a column, but I would have never imegined the anthropomorphic form it would take.
it was like: there is somebody in my studio, is it me, is it a ghost, is it good, is it mean, and then I understood. It was me, it was my memory, it was my skin, it was my old body or better my young body and I could sit with it and talk to it and embrace
It is soft and strong at the same time, I cannot hurt it, it is warm and compact and when you slide over the surface you feel the seams like the bark of a tree.
I have made other 3 colonne since then. My father, my uncle and my son, and I hope to continue because it is a work that makes memories tangible a way to preserve and to renew.
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