Archeologia Domestica Vol.1 presents Silvia Giambrone’s research through a collection of recent works. These are made with a variety of techniques, from modified ready-mades, to engravings, scans and other reproduction techniques. These images often reveal traces, in a semiotic sense, they are the testimony of domestic objects. We are faced with perplexing juxtapositions that cause our minds to skip, oscillating between the realms of domestic and daily life, and that of the allegory of existence. Like Fiat lux, liturgical objects which on closer examination recall Molotov cocktails; or Nobody’s room, object-microphones around which the performance with the same title is held. In these works, the objects are not altered in order to shift their meaning into new areas in the real world, or to provoke aesthetic disclosures. Rather, the intention is to reveal hidden potential, hidden and implied meanings that were waiting to be made explicit. The works in the exhibition explore and develop the theme of conflict and threat in relation to the theme of domesticity. Daily domestic life thus becomes a kind of symbol of the self, adapting and confronting the conflict itself. This is quite clear, for example, in the series of works called Vertigo which is a series of objects that have been scanned and printed on wrapping paper. These are pairs of objects that seem to threaten one another. They also evoke domestic violence and create lines, whose juxtaposition triggers a mental clash of associations and reflections, with continuous references to the idea of threat and daily life.
The video Sotto tiro is a kind of archetype of work, and is a partial key to its understanding. The subject being targeted is at first irritated, but then learns to live with, and almost collaborates with, the conflict. This personal reflection is brought to an almost analytical level of searching for the origins and seeking the meaning. This research is extended throughout the rest of the exhibition, almost like a concept album. I believe that throughout Silvia Giambrone’s exhibition Archeologia Domestica Vol.1 it seems like things leave traces of themselves as they rest on the world, but they do so in order to disappear better – as Silvia Bordini observed in a text about photography – and they disappear in the appearance of meaning. In this disappearance, something remains, but there is more: this disappearance is itself something. Firstly, we can see the traces of reality elaborated through various techniques, a domestic, daily reality, which, once it is removed from its constrains of objective material existence, reveals its gnosis, assumes a mental state, weapons for battle, origin of the world conceived through almost spiritual lines of energy: conflict, research, lines, emotions.
The domestic environment is the quintessential place for the greatest battle of all, which is existence. Behind this, and in a hypothetical secondary position, there is the disappearance of objects as such. Objects here become an archaeology of themselves, their disappearance is indicative of their slightness, their feebleness, but is not a total state of inexistence. Their turning into ghosts highlights their allegorical transformation and displays them as excavations, analysis. Not ghosts in the sense of dust and bones, but a much deeper and imposing originating presence, so much so that even their presence as ready-mades is unsure, transfigured, a pretext to become something other than themselves, revealing other hidden existential meanings.
And finally there is the disappearance, which exists of itself. This is a disappearance seen as an object, as the tangible nature of disappearing. The fog surrounding the world becomes a presence as the objects retreat. However we look at it, it transforms into thought, inasmuch as the excavation itself is not just a path to travel, but also an integral part of understanding. This is the presence of a field beyond the field of reality and within it. The field of understanding itself, seen as an aesthetic field. (2015)
See the artworks on http://www.silviagiambrone.com/en/opere/
