“A showcase”, in Via del Consolato, for years part of the “The Independent” project of the Maxxi Foundation aimed at promoting independent realities that deal with contemporary art, hosts: Life is a wheel, continuation of the homonymous performance-video that Alice Schivardi proposes within the itinerant project “Mirabilia Urbis”, curated by Artq13 and Giuliana Benassi, aimed at exploring the historical-cultural transformations undergone by the Campo de ‘Fiori area in Rome. A showcase houses the means used by the artist – a vintage bicycle – to carry out his own performative action.
The object-symbol thus crystallizes within a Showcase not only to perpetuate the memory of a little-known event in Roman history, but also to become an icon of a freedom that is now negligible and that we no longer feel the urge to defend.
A reflection that also passes through the stylistic code of the artist, who chooses to impersonate the historical character without ever replacing him, finally fleeing carefree and almost irreverent – like the embroidery girl – aboard her grandmother’s bicycle, the common thread of chronicles national and private stories. “A ready made as a common thread between two centuries, which links past and present through the performative act, and finally crystallizes as an iconic monument / memento of a freedom that is not always guaranteed.”
A.Bortolazzo
Comments are closed