work
Homage to Cindy Sherman (Performed by my mother)
| category | Installation |
| subject | Political / Social, Human figure |
| tags | biografia, archivio, iconografia, ruoli, mamma, trasformismo, memoria |
| base | 400 cm |
| height | 100 cm |
| depth | 5 cm |
| year | 2015 |
Installation varable dimentions: Photographic prints, 1 copy
"Homage to Cindy Sherman (performed by mother)" is composed by three chapters and it originates from my mother's personal photographic archive.
In the first chapter I selected images that portrayed her alone in situations that seems to be stereotyped (for the poses, for the clothes...) and I brought them together composing some small mini thematic series: "Mum at the sea", "Fashion Mum", "Exotica", "Mamma and the means of transport" and so on.
The set of these series, placed side by side, generates a snapshot biographical storytelling and highlights the iconographies that we unwittingly contribute to create or that we unconsciously follow, for they belong to our era. These "roles" or "characters" appear to us today, not to the protagonist of the shot. They appear to us by virtue of the time elapsed between shooting and fruition. The context, the pose and the clothing create the character, translating a simple shot into an iconographic figure. Comparing ironically my mother to Cindy Sherman -whose characters derives from a strong intentionality in shooting and stereotyping, as well as a precise and meticulous construction of the image- I want to create an ironic gap, a hiatus between any personal biography and a corpus of well-known works now belonging to the history of contemporary art.
I was interested in extracting many still images from an individual biography to recreate a character following another narrative model. At the same time, I wondered how much the photographic image undergoes changes in perception over time, in a way that documentary images of a life appear very similar to others built with a precise iconographic intention.
But in particular, I ask myself: “When a photo stops being a document to become an iconography?
"Homage to Cindy Sherman (performed by my mother) chapter 2" consists of three shots: they show what remains after I extracted the photos exposed in chapter 1 from the album: the separate biographies of my father and mother.
Holes are important, they remind us that everything is told in a photo album (a meeting between two people, who in the future would have generated a family) could not have happened.
When in an album we see holes, missing pieces, the feeling generated is strong and moves between death and erasing of the past.
The third chapter is is not a mere mention of the sources, without making them accessible. It is a way to pay homage to something that has been part of our lives for a long time and now is disappeared, replaced by digital albums, shared and fragile.
It turns "Homage to Cindy Sherman (performed by my mother)" into "Homage to (Cindy Sherman performed by) my mother", coming back to an individual biography as a place of infinite potential, including images.
"Homage to Cindy Sherman (performed by mother)" is composed by three chapters and it originates from my mother's personal photographic archive.
In the first chapter I selected images that portrayed her alone in situations that seems to be stereotyped (for the poses, for the clothes...) and I brought them together composing some small mini thematic series: "Mum at the sea", "Fashion Mum", "Exotica", "Mamma and the means of transport" and so on.
The set of these series, placed side by side, generates a snapshot biographical storytelling and highlights the iconographies that we unwittingly contribute to create or that we unconsciously follow, for they belong to our era. These "roles" or "characters" appear to us today, not to the protagonist of the shot. They appear to us by virtue of the time elapsed between shooting and fruition. The context, the pose and the clothing create the character, translating a simple shot into an iconographic figure. Comparing ironically my mother to Cindy Sherman -whose characters derives from a strong intentionality in shooting and stereotyping, as well as a precise and meticulous construction of the image- I want to create an ironic gap, a hiatus between any personal biography and a corpus of well-known works now belonging to the history of contemporary art.
I was interested in extracting many still images from an individual biography to recreate a character following another narrative model. At the same time, I wondered how much the photographic image undergoes changes in perception over time, in a way that documentary images of a life appear very similar to others built with a precise iconographic intention.
But in particular, I ask myself: “When a photo stops being a document to become an iconography?
"Homage to Cindy Sherman (performed by my mother) chapter 2" consists of three shots: they show what remains after I extracted the photos exposed in chapter 1 from the album: the separate biographies of my father and mother.
Holes are important, they remind us that everything is told in a photo album (a meeting between two people, who in the future would have generated a family) could not have happened.
When in an album we see holes, missing pieces, the feeling generated is strong and moves between death and erasing of the past.
The third chapter is is not a mere mention of the sources, without making them accessible. It is a way to pay homage to something that has been part of our lives for a long time and now is disappeared, replaced by digital albums, shared and fragile.
It turns "Homage to Cindy Sherman (performed by my mother)" into "Homage to (Cindy Sherman performed by) my mother", coming back to an individual biography as a place of infinite potential, including images.
