Pret-a-Port...rait

So, my dear guests, if you`ll take a look down the corridor, you will notice two ouvres, both part of the precious `Design Research Task` collection of the Gran Maestro Machi Ticredi! ...

Ah, let`s get back to earth for a second. These are two ideas I`ve had for the portraits made by juxtaposition of symbolic objects for ourselves. While choosing the objects, we had to keep in mind we had to think of our environment, our beliefs, our way of viewing the world and our experiences, as we have convened on a previous seminar that these are essential parameters to define our identity. The objects I have included in the final work are slightly different than the initial seminar material. In the seminar, the package contained: a lightbulb (experience), a book (beliefs), lots of papers with notes, sketches or cup marks on it, sweets wrapers (environment)and a camera (way of seeing the world). The collages have all of these except the camera (although, you could argue that the eye is a reference to the camera) and the sweets.

I guess the next thing to do is expand a bit on the symbolism part. Now, probably the most puzzling one for an outside observer would be the association of the lightbulb with experience. Most of the times, the idea of the lightbulb as the cartoonish representation of the spark, the Eureka! moment. So, in this respect, it is connected with that still unknown territory called imagination and creation. Still, as the day-to-day object we use in our lamps, it also has the technological conotation, and through it, the link to rationality. The way it is included in the first portrait, floating in water (should I remind anyone the whole mumbo-jumbo about water and dreams and the subconscious and all that Fraud...sorry, I mean...Freud stuff?) it emphasises the two ideas that can be associated with it and their contrasting nature.


Books are NOT meant to offer a coherent system of beliefs (sorry for those who thinks so), but propose directions in which one could advance his/her ideas. I don`t have a fetish for books but I know some people who do, so I will try and be as diplomatic as possible. Despite their apparently neutral appearance, books can be condemning, self-righteous and blind to the obvious for the simple fact that they not only shape our beliefs, but are shaped by our beliefs (not just by that of the author). Should I give an example to illustrate my point? Works that have been given hideous interpretations to motivate prejudice (the hand reaching out, as in a gesture of mercy or desperation in the second portrait), hatred and genocide against the other (no, I`m not talking solely about religious texts, I also mean Mein Kamp and Malleus Maleficarum). So, again, a word of caution...and don`t I just love ambivalence?

Using the papers to represent environment, I went for the very thing that my mum has always been made at me for: having piles and piles of scribbled papers, sketches, notes scattered all over my desk. It happens whenever I settle into a new space and create a working environment. I don`t usually take specific things with me if I move (dolls, boxes, pictures, etc), but I re-create this sort of paper-notes-sketches habitat. I used a veil-like material with sparkles on it while taking a photo of some of these papers. I liked the idea because I could use it to give the impression of relief, of `mountains` of paper, but also a sort of fluidity and motion. As they are capturing thoughts, they are a bit like them...fleeting, chaotic, veiled for an outside observer and sometimes...well....brilliant (sic!).