We've been many things, 2024, Rome

“The possible has been tried and failed. Now it’s time to try the impossible.” Sun Ra

The objects, sculptures, forms and assemblages in the installation We’ve Been Many Things relate to the idea of the object of magic, the talisman, the ex voto, the relic. The object that protects, supports, transforms; the object of power.

The starting point for the installation is the observation of the common Roman practice that is Spolia and that consists of recycling pieces of stone from ancient architecture and fragmentary sculptures by incorporating them into more recent walls.

The practice of collecting, composing and fabricating from what has been found and harvested is well known to me.

In Rome, I delve into the visual material that this ancient city has to offer while collecting the tangible and rejected material that the contemporary city provides me with. What follows is a long, slow dialogue between past and present, intimate and communal, real and fictional, valuing the previous lives of materials, their wear and tear, their flaws.

This research on the magical and powerful object nourishes my work, which is already deeply rooted in a form of self-healing and self-protection.

I continue my study into a fragmented body by deconstructing the idea, image and symbolism of legs and feet, of the bust and what it contains, of the face with its five senses, and finally of the hands; what they hold, what they give and what they receive, what they build.

Studying these parts of the body in relation to intimate and personal experience, but also their porosity to the world, its vegetation and other species. What we see here is a body that spans a wide range of temporalities, a mythological body, a body that is ambiguous yet recognisable,

a body that is changing and powerful, a complex and universal body.

The installation is layered and can be seen as a whole, suggesting you to zoom in on the four composite pannels. Each of which is made up of varying numbers of units that are also to be considered as individual pieces of work.

I would like to thank Wallonie Bruxelles International and Academia Belgica for their support