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Tema Celeste Contemporary
Art
number 85, pages 70/71
Self-portrait
Milan, June 1999
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.
Artissima. Performance
curated by Francesco Bernardelli in collaboration with Castello
di Rivoli and Gallery of Modern Art, Turin.
A pillow to talk to
yourself, 1997-2000. Silicon
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.
Belly, 1999. Mattress
with belly buttons. Silicon
New York, August 18,
2000
Dear Paola,
Finally you can breathe after the summer heat. You can smell the
stench of dirt, people, food, and frenetic life. Tales of love
and desperation seem to rise right up from the sidewalk.
Garbage bags are all over the place, stacked into mountains of
things that once belonged to someone. Now they are part of a huge
accumulation of unwanted objects out on the street. I could sit
for hours and just watch life go by, my eyes following all those
feet that trample briskly over everything in their way.
Fall is just around the corner and the ground is covered with
ginkgo leaves. The ginkgo tree lives a long time; it's strong
enough to resist the pollution of the twentieth century. Its leaves
are delicate and light as flower petals, soft as skin. Their autumnal
color contrasts with the gray of the streets, with the decadence
of this city, so saturated with the energy of all who have lived
here over so many years.
I love this world of solitary people, of life in all its facets.
Maybe what I really love is the power of joy and pain, of survival
and of indifference.
I love being far away from everything I know and having to start
all over again, listening to new rhythms, learning little things
like how to do laundry in the launderettes or wash in other people's
bathrooms, sleeping on secondhand mattresses and eating at the
tables of who knows who, in a city where everything is up for
grabs once it ends up on the street.
Memories, 1999. Silicon
New York, November 2,
2000
Hi Fa,
You don't know that I picked up three little dead birds on the
street. There they were, lying there as if they were sunning themselves.
I was afraid to touch them, but I overcame my fear because their
mystery fascinated me. All day long I've had three dead birds
in my bag. Just thinking about it makes me feel strange. It's
incredible, but what remains is not the body; there is more death
than there is body. You could almost say that I was carrying a
little bit of death in my bag.
I ate in a run-down Indian restaurant where everyone smiled at
me because of my green hair, but all I could think about was what
they couldn't see. I showed the hidden contents of my bag to only
one person, just to see the frightened and sad expression on their
face. A dead bird represents life that has disappeared, perhaps
because we think of birds as free, light animals, symbols of liberty
and life. The soul flies away and death remains. I'm going to
them now, to face a state to which I am not yet accustomed.-Luisa
Rabbia
The last autumn days,
2000. 160 slides animated by crossing dissolve. Installation view
at ISCP, New York
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