work
Dormire con artista
| category | Performance |
| subject | Human figure |
| tags | |
| hours | 3 |
| minutes | 0 |
| seconds | 0 |
| year | 2018 |
I slept on many different beds since I was a child. My mother has always been very proud of the fact that I never made stories wherever she left me to sleep, whether this was the home of friends or relatives. I was a friendly girl, smiled at everyone, and slept anywhere. When I was 14 years old, I started to sleep in the high school dormitory, I slept with 5 girls of my age: the lowest floor of a bunk bed had happened to me. When the girl on top of me was looking at a novel, she often burst out laughing all the time, stamping her feet on the wooden bed, and the movement like a small earthquake woke me up every time. When I had the menstruation for the first time, another of the girls invited me to sleep with her, on the top floor of another bunk bed, about 90 centimeters wide, and she spent most of the time in that night to explain to me how I should behave in this situation.
In 2016, during my Erasmus in Madrid, I met a Chinese girl, we met each other a few times, but she needed a place to sleep for three nights because her lease ended. I had a single bed so we slept together for three nights hugging each other so we could both be in bed. I felt a strange and familiar feeling, even if I did not know her well, in those days we chatted a lot and deeply.
Sometimes sleeping with a person is too difficult, sometimes very easy, but sharing a place so intimate with a stranger is something difficult to accept. The bed is the place where we find security and tranquility, is the symbol of protection, possession and home. Breaking this protection is also a strong and courageous gesture, I was very intrigued by people who wanted to try the performance 'sleeping with the artist', even their psychological reactions.
The performance lasted 3 hours in the MA & EC gallery during my solo show.
When the performance started, I stood still on one side of the double bed, while I closed my eyes and remained motionless. After a while the first person arrived. When this person approached me, my heart was beating faster and stronger: I did not imagine that when this person would lie down beside me I would be able to listen to his every breath and every minimal movement would become very large. Then came the second, the third and so on. At a certain point, I started losing points of reference and did not master the passage of time. Every person came, slept with me and then went away, sometimes confusing the arrival and departure of people: we were surrounded by my installation, by my works, I associated the performance and the visit of the exhibition. People usually come into the gallery to visit the show and then leave, at that moment people were coming to my bed, sleeping and leaving. The exhibition did not exist for me, it was a visual and cultural sharing, and sharing was right at the center of this performance.
At the end of it I had no idea that it had already been 3 hours, even if staying motionless in a bed is something terribly intolerable.
In 2016, during my Erasmus in Madrid, I met a Chinese girl, we met each other a few times, but she needed a place to sleep for three nights because her lease ended. I had a single bed so we slept together for three nights hugging each other so we could both be in bed. I felt a strange and familiar feeling, even if I did not know her well, in those days we chatted a lot and deeply.
Sometimes sleeping with a person is too difficult, sometimes very easy, but sharing a place so intimate with a stranger is something difficult to accept. The bed is the place where we find security and tranquility, is the symbol of protection, possession and home. Breaking this protection is also a strong and courageous gesture, I was very intrigued by people who wanted to try the performance 'sleeping with the artist', even their psychological reactions.
The performance lasted 3 hours in the MA & EC gallery during my solo show.
When the performance started, I stood still on one side of the double bed, while I closed my eyes and remained motionless. After a while the first person arrived. When this person approached me, my heart was beating faster and stronger: I did not imagine that when this person would lie down beside me I would be able to listen to his every breath and every minimal movement would become very large. Then came the second, the third and so on. At a certain point, I started losing points of reference and did not master the passage of time. Every person came, slept with me and then went away, sometimes confusing the arrival and departure of people: we were surrounded by my installation, by my works, I associated the performance and the visit of the exhibition. People usually come into the gallery to visit the show and then leave, at that moment people were coming to my bed, sleeping and leaving. The exhibition did not exist for me, it was a visual and cultural sharing, and sharing was right at the center of this performance.
At the end of it I had no idea that it had already been 3 hours, even if staying motionless in a bed is something terribly intolerable.
