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A pillow to talk to
yourself, 1997. Silicon
Since 1997 I've
been making many pillows as "portraits". Each pillow
is made with the mold of the ear of the person it belongs to
Performance (1999)
curated by Francesco Bernardelli in collaboration with Castello
di Rivoli and Gallery of Modern Art, Turin (Italy)
I sleep. I choose this parallel
life in order to enter into the reality of things-but in a different
and total way, because in those hours I oscillate between the
past, the present, and the imagination. Maybe reality itself is
only imagination and what I dream is the truth.
If life is in our heads and in our thoughts, then it follows that
we live most authentically in our dreams.
I am fascinated by the hermetism of the body, by its ability to
insulate itself from the outside world while it experiences emotions
through images, which at times end up being nearly indistinguishable
from one another.
I love to sleep because it is in moments of sleep that important
encounters take place. My rational mind lowers its defenses; in
the midst of fluctuating emotions I enter into the totality of
life, into a present that is the synthesis of my past, liberated
at last in oneiric images. It's about the hallucination that we
carry around inside us all day long, which sometimes appears when,
opening our eyes again for a second, we catch a glimpse of a fleeting,
indistinct part of ourselves.
Turin, October 9, 1999
Today I exhibited my intimacy at Artissima. I showed myself, nude
under a white sheet while sleeping on a pillow I had made that
had a silicone ear attached to it. I managed to completely separate
myself from everything that was happening and give the spectators
a two-hour-long vision of the most private part of my life-the
part where I feel most vulnerable.
I have been analyzing the world of sleep for two years now, and
today I felt ready to show myself to others and to juxtapose two
opposing realities: mine-intimate, silent-and the chaotic and
confusing reality of a gallery-opening crowd.
The sleeping body is a mystery; we don't know where it really
is, or who really lies sleeping. The body is in this world but
the head far away, enfolded in embryonic warmth: the body underneath
the covers, sunk deep into the mattress, the head underneath the
pillow . . . each object is infused with my smells and-who knows?-maybe
even with my soul.
Today other people didn't exist. I took a journey inside myself,
accompanied by the sound of my breathing amplified in the room.
I could feel myself within my skin, isolated from everything.
Coming back to reality was a terrible shock. I wasn't ready. I
didn't understand what had happened. I thought I had been sleeping,
but now I think that actually I had begun to fall into a trancelike
state. I had traveled inside myself in front of crowds of spectators
that came and went. Time hadn't existed, only a continuous flow
that carried me away, marked by the rhythm of my breathing. Then
the light that had been shining on me was switched off, and I
opened my eyes but I wasn't ready to get up. I hadn't come back
yet, and I couldn't be with other people-they were still too far
away. So my body just gave out. I was extremely pale. Someone
wanted my signature, but the pencil slipped out of my hand. I
tried to find myself, but when I did I felt farther away than
ever, frightened and alone. Suddenly, my sleep belonged to everyone.
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