Isolated. Living Yourself
Posted on May 29 2020
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Author Silvia Colombo
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Isolated. Living Yourself │ 6h March - 11th June 2020
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Isolated. Living Yourself is the second and last chapter of a couple of group exhibitions reflecting on the concept of “isolation”. While the first one, though, explored its geographic and environmental side, this one is more focused on its human aspect. In fact, the pieces here exhibited look at and are somehow connected to people. People intended as self-referred and introspective beings, but also as a plurality of voices where everyone speaks for himself/herself as well as for a whole community. It’s in fact when experiencing similar situations, once an artwork is able to depict common thoughts, to represent life or to portray a collective past that the singular becomes plural. “I” turns into “we”. Art passes from being exclusive, as one man’s creation, to being inclusive, pluralistic and democratic, embodying people’s voice.
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Already in 1989, the artist Barbara Kruger claimed that “Your Body is a Battleground”. Overlapping a red slogan on a black & white image, like in a commercial, she wanted to affirm people’s right to make their own decisions on their own bodies. She intended to encourage them in leading their own battle, not being afraid to show the traces time leaves on them. On us.
Even if in a wider and perhaps shifted sense, this is also what the artists within “Isolation” want to say. While they reflect on themselves and on their individuality, their bodies (or someone else’s body) become battlegrounds ready to support their cause. With no physical, natural as well as imaginary borders admitted.
Already in 1989, the artist Barbara Kruger claimed that “Your Body is a Battleground”. Overlapping a red slogan on a black & white image, like in a commercial, she wanted to affirm people’s right to make their own decisions on their own bodies. She intended to encourage them in leading their own battle, not being afraid to show the traces time leaves on them. On us.
Even if in a wider and perhaps shifted sense, this is also what the artists within “Isolation” want to say. While they reflect on themselves and on their individuality, their bodies (or someone else’s body) become battlegrounds ready to support their cause. With no physical, natural as well as imaginary borders admitted.
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Larry French, South of Taos, 2018
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For some of them isolation means loneliness, a secluded life that was maybe voluntarily chosen or occurred by chance. Is it us looking for solitary experiences or are we forced to it by external factors such as our age or the place we live in? The exhibition doesn’t give us an answer, this is not its purpose. On the contrary, it opens multiple scenarios, several windows on the world suggesting us that we are on our own but we are not the only ones.
For a group of other artists, isolation is a consequence instead. It is a repercussion following a physical as well as emotional abuse. And when those episodes are almost impossible to explain in real life, pictures have the power to substitute words, telling a painful story, made of fractures and interruptions. Our breathe breaks, our minds remember while they try to erase facts and memories.
For a group of other artists, isolation is a consequence instead. It is a repercussion following a physical as well as emotional abuse. And when those episodes are almost impossible to explain in real life, pictures have the power to substitute words, telling a painful story, made of fractures and interruptions. Our breathe breaks, our minds remember while they try to erase facts and memories.
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It is exactly at this point that the exhibition takes us by the hand into the following section, where solitude is a synonym for mental health. That subtle edge where our minds struggle to find its balance is either yelled, as in Ian Curtis’ songs (“Mother, I tried please believe me/ I'm doing the best that I can/ I'm ashamed of the things I've been put through/ I'm ashamed of the person I am/ Isolation, isolation, isolation”), either silenced, like in the images on show. In other words, the exhibition Isolation. Living Yourself is a fragile elegy that one needs to handle, observe and absorb accurately. At times it is painfully poetic, at times so much real to become surreal.
It is exactly at this point that the exhibition takes us by the hand into the following section, where solitude is a synonym for mental health. That subtle edge where our minds struggle to find its balance is either yelled, as in Ian Curtis’ songs (“Mother, I tried please believe me/ I'm doing the best that I can/ I'm ashamed of the things I've been put through/ I'm ashamed of the person I am/ Isolation, isolation, isolation”), either silenced, like in the images on show. In other words, the exhibition Isolation. Living Yourself is a fragile elegy that one needs to handle, observe and absorb accurately. At times it is painfully poetic, at times so much real to become surreal.
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Evgenia Huber, Nowhere, 2018
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Massimo Schiavoni, Only, 2019
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Donna Garcia, Blur, 2016
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Léa Brinon, Untitled, 2019
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