Site-Specific Installation, CIAC Museum – Contemporary Art InternationalCentre at the Colonna Castle, curated by Claudio Libero Pisano. Genazzano, Rome, Italy
The Colata Room is the name of the space that partially burned down few years ago and it has been used since as a project room for site-specific interventions. For centuries this room was the place for the castle’ servants to produce “lisciva” into: a liquid obtained by boiling ash in plenty of water, useful to whiten fabrics and, if mixed with fat, to become soap. I wanted the soap to claim back its space. I installed in ten days. I subsequently intervened in the space to “reply” to the changes that took place in the space because of the weather conditions and the passage of time.
This is my writing left at the entrance of the room:
“Avenge forgetfulness, memory exude. The soap breaks, breaks levees, resets everything, emerges from below, finds a break and comes out, muddily walking upwards, regaining its place to bring home the origin; a slow coming, a psychic material that not longer wants to keep silent its unconscious, just like rags, wood, ashes that stick on the skin, the heat of the flame that reddens the face, the foam that never emerges and the fat of pigs, helpless and rancid. As expected, the sumptuous, protected warmth of the upper rooms becomes a huge effort of arms and sweat, the work of bodies and more bodies imprinted in the walls, this space testifies to his function, his destiny: to wash away all filthiness and keep clean the face of the wealth …while the rest dies below. Revenge.”
credits:
Serafina Melone, Tiziana Di Santo, Giancarlo il Custode, Gianni Piacentini,
gli abitanti di Genazzano.