INSTALLATION
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Il Rinascimento Sospeso
For her Artwork, “Il Rinascimento Sospeso” artist Victoria DeBlassie reflects on the theme of conservation by examining what is deemed useful enough to be preserved in the space in Prato that used to a large scale refrigerator called, "Celle Frigo." Using the history of citrus in Tuscany as a point of departure, DeBlassie unveils citrus’ embodiment of how cultural value is constructed and deconstructed over time and how this value is what determines what gets conserved and what doesn’t. During the Italian Renaissance, citrus was only available to the wealthy, and it was housed in lemon greenhouses or limonaia made especially to preserve and keep this type of fruit alive in the winter months. Revealing change and development over succeeding centuries, oranges decreased in value cross-culturally as they became ubiquitous. DeBlassie applied Tuscan tanning techniques to citrus peels in order to preserve them while recalling this history and questioning how systems of cultural value are constructed and preserved. From the peels, DeBlassie has created a type of cascade that at once recalls the dramatic Renaissance fountains as well as a piece of meat hanging from meat hooks, a stark contrast meant to reflect both the history of the material itself and the history of the location. -
Cenacoli Ombrellìferi
Cenacoli Ombrellìferi —a project realized thanks to Chille de la Balanza—examines both the history of ex psychiatric hospital San Salvi in Florence, Italy and the conceptualizations of the idea of community through visual and narrative arts. Using discarded umbrellas collected by the community before the pandemic began and during, the artist DeBlassie created an 'umbrella' system of protection hanging from the trees, vast in size and covering a space large enough to fit under for moments of reflection. Under this structure, there was a performance in which writer Connor Maley read his writings about the history of San Salvi, the long history of confinement and isolation over the years and all the problems that accompany being confined and isolated. Taken together, the texts and testimonies and the umbrellas, or rather, the umbrella made of broken umbrellas, phenomenologically explore the concept of 'community' as a thing, as a true but also mysterious substance, as an organism, as hope, as one tool that depending on the hands in which it is cultivated can galvanize people or can devastate people, therefore exploring communities as a valence with the potential to increase the troubles and suffering of those who come to seek care, peace, serenity, love, tenderness or, if not, as something more transversal that can create more beauty and promote a more welcoming world. The moment in which a community betrays its own community and the moment in which a community, by doing the opposite, respects its determining and original values and takes care of its own community contains the moment of tension and meaning that we would like to explore, that instance when a community decides whether it will do more damage or will instead do the work it is called upon to do, that is to heal, improve, aggregate people together for a future, build, and create futures or at least the possibility of dreaming again, against all devastation and disappointment and any hindering sadness, promising futures. In the time of a pandemic, of constant death, incomprehensible disease, rage as if it rains, endless worry, and frenzy at every hour, how can a community mend the torn fabric of our societies? The way in which a community functions has, at this very moment concretely confused in every sense, a power, a value, and meanings markedly different from those before. In all of this, considering everything that has happened in 2020 and tying it to the story of San Salvi and its patients and the history of psychic or physical illnesses, the texts the umbrellas reflect and narrate the intensification and urgency of the functionality of a community in these days of pandemic, fear, fear, and fragility that will surely continue to define our times for a long time, unfortunately, and now more than ever the community will be called upon to make the right choices, decisions, and behaviors to allow us to overcome the challenges. Performance of Maley: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1C1KHHp-3YiUafsKZP1TRRTPgh-C868lh?usp=sharing -
Ferro Bacchiato
(Text by curator Matteo Innocenti) Even today the inhabitants of the Castelbottaccio tell that this area, until the radical transformations of work and production from the mid-twentieth century, was not characterized by agriculture but by crafts. There wasn’t so much land and vegetation, just stone and iron. Just outside the center of the town emerges the Morgia Corvara (or Curvata), a large limestone rock that served as a precious resource for the construction of houses. Local stonemasons also built the portals for Piazza Vittoria and Corso Umberto I; their tools, like those needed by other craftsmen, were forged by hand, with great care so that they lasted for a long time (being necessary for the work, they constituted personal patrimony). Today some inhabitants are recovering and collecting these tools, to make them the nucleus of a small museum. In this case Victoria DeBlassie, in relation to an idea of care and memory, has chosen to intervene with a particular process: by wrapping the instruments in cotton and linen cloths, and using heat, the surface layer of rust has come to form a series of “prints”, traces of presence that oscillate between abstraction and figuration. The resulting sheets, of various sizes, were set up, suspended, in Piazza della Vittoria, creating an animated trend, favoring various visual points according to the route. At times the tools were easily recognizable, at other times their print had spread out becoming evanescent or was repeated - for this variety of composition, the work also contains a pictorial component. Ferro Bacchiato is a tribute to the industriousness and creativity of Castelbottaccio that builds upon an important element of country culture in a new form. -
Sfrangi Pani, Sfrangi Panni
(Text by Matteo Innocenti) Castelbottaccio is a town of Norman origin, whose foundation dates back to the 11th century AD; there have been various episodes of historical importance over the ages - also in relation to the overall events in Molise; the first period from which the artists drew inspiration is the modern one, in particular the passage between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries which coincided in various parts of Europe, in the wake of the French Revolution, with the rise and strengthening of republican ideas and movements, based on liberalism. The complex series of events that led to the proclamation of the Neapolitan Republic in 1799 - animated by the Jacobin ideology and evidently opposed the Bourbons - also had repercussions in the Castelbottaccese territory, through the “enlightened” action of Olimpia Frangipane (born in 1761). A beautiful and cultured woman, of noble origin, was just twenty when she got married to Francesco Cardone, baron of Castelbottaccio: thanks to the baroness's intelligence and foresight, the baronial palace became a meeting place for many Molise intellectuals - including Vincenzo Cuoco and some members of the Pepe family. The Upper Room, which lasted until 1795, was not just a coveted place for discussion; what was talked about and theorized on had to serve to improve the life of the country in a concrete way. An example: Olimpia wanted an oven in all the houses of the inhabitants of Castelbottaccio, in order to interrupt the practice of using the baron's only one, and when used the inhabitants had to leave a part of the baked bread to him as a contribution. This event, in its singularity - related to a certain idea of justice in the division and availability of assets - served as an initial impetus for Victoria DeBlassie; in fact, the artist constantly resorts to the recycling of materials for his works - as a critical reflection on the consumerism that characterizes today's society - and here he has compared, by analogy, the baron of the time to what each of us now pays its pledge, precisely the capitalist system. Therefore she asked the women of the Intrecci Castelbottaccio-Lupara collective—a group that has been collaborating for about three years—to choose some fabrics they no longer use - of any type: cloths, sheets, clothes - and to weave them to create carpets in the shape of the circle. These, also similar to doilies and other small textile artifacts that are made in homes as domestic interior decorations, become the individual elements of the installation Sfrangi Pani, Sfrangi Panni consistently presented on the ancient external wall, at the base of the Olimpia Frangipane palace. The work is connected to a traditional activity in various parts of Italy - embroidery - but refers to the current situation of the country, and celebrates the spirit of collectivity and communion existing in the group of women who collaborated. It also concerns memory, for the recovery of materials that would otherwise have been lost because they are no longer useful (literally giving them a new appearance) and thereby linking memory, the passage of time, tangible traces and memories that follow. Artist's Note: The title Sfrangi Pani, Sfrangi Panni, is a play on the words sfrangere, meaning to break into pieces; pani, the plural form of bread; sfrangiare, meaning to become frayed: and panni, which is the plural form of cloth, in which all the previous terms weave together to create the poetic notion of community via breaking bread, as well as referencing the history of Donna Olympia Frangipane’s resistance to the monarchy via bread and ovens thus sitting in connection with my project alongside the collective Intrecci Castelbottaccio-Lupara, which involved the tearing and thereby the fraying of unwanted cloth followed by braiding them into a self-sufficient work that questions contemporary consumerism much in the way that Olympia Frangipane questioned power at that time. -
Trame plastiche – oltre la superficie
(Text by curato Mattia Lapperier) Since the last century we have been extremely familiar with the concept of mass consumption. Well-being and prosperity seem to be the most immediate consequence of this phenomenon, but as you scratch the surface it is obvious that the unscrupulous use of goods and services leads to a sort of object fetishism or, more dramatically, consolidates the existence of a mere aesthetic of the disposable. And that also affects the way we cultivate interpersonal relationships. The installation conceived by Victoria DeBlassie and Leonardo Moretti reflects on the apologia of the superfluous in which contemporary society seems enmeshed. The plastic fragments by Victoria and the painted lace by Leonardo offer two different and complementary approaches to the question. Victoria DeBlassie, by raising structures that are viral as well as totemic, exploits the potential of the material to express profound impatience with an imminent global lamination; Leonardo Moretti instead represents the ephemeral par excellence: the accessory, the unnecessary by provocatively suggesting an invitation to go beyond the visible surface, beyond the appearance. Both artists, who are in open and constant dialogue with each other, allow the viewer to glimpse amongst the dense textures that make up their works the slight possibility of a different, deeper meaning. This is configured as a search for the “broken mesh in the network ” (as the Italian poet Eugenio Montale wrote): here one can imagine the rare possibility of salvation from a flattened, trivialized world of plastic. The twists in PVC by Victoria DeBlassie, juxtaposed or joined together, or superimposed as in the pictorial ones by Leonardo Moretti, not only stage the irreducible dichotomy between presentation and representation of the sensitive datum but, above all, they parodistically celebrate consumerism, as if it were of a dystopian entity in progressive expansion, from which to defend itself with every means possible. -
Merletto Architettonico
For Tessuti Urbani,I created Merletto Architettonico, inspired by textile and lace patterns and forms that are found in the overlooked everyday object of plastic crates. By choosing to work with white plastic crates, a reference to the classic color of lace, I enabled the discovery of the hidden beauty of an overlooked material. In creating connections between plastic crates and lace in relation to Prato’s cultural link to textiles, I cut, altered, and changed the Gestalt of the white crate to mimic the look of lace in order to reference clothes. The exaggerated scale of this urban lace references architecture, and the plastic crates naturally refer to the food they’re responsible for containing inside their structures that already mimic lace-like designs. The connection to clothes, food and shelter highlights my message of elevating the importance of needs instead of wants, as well as underlining the significance of the creative reuse of materials in order to call into question the excess of contemporary material culture. -
Contrapuntal Cascades II
The Countrapuntal Cascade series were inspired by ideas behind Plasticaia and in these installations, the citrus plants are embodied instead by the tanned skins of the citrus themselves. -
Contrapuntal Cascades I
The Countrapuntal Cascade series were inspired by ideas behind Plasticaia and in these installations, the citrus plants are embodied instead by the tanned skins of the citrus themselves. -
Plasticaia
Plasticaia is a neologism that I created to reference plastic and the limonaia. Plastic is both a noun, referring to this material, and an adjective, referring to the ability of any material to be molded into a particular shape, just as Italian Renaissance gardens shaped nature into specific orderly designs. The limonaia was a common feature in these Renaissance gardens that allowed citrus trees to grow inside a greenhouse, enabling them to exist in regions where they where they shouldn’t have been able to. In a similar way, plastic is a material that is man-made from natural materials, making something exist that isn’t naturally occurring. Creating parallels among the Renaissance gardens, limonaias, and plastic, I ask the question: how has the human propensity to control nature created problems in contemporary life? A symmetrical “garden” was constructed inside Villa Romana’s glass-house “limonaia,” creating a parterre whose hedges are made from colorful plastic-crates that are exaggeratedly tall. Edged into these architectural hedges are small tubes filled with the sand-like plastic off-cuts from the plastic crates wherein lies seedlings from citrus crops from seeds bought from supermarkets as well as gathered from the historical Villa Castello and Petraia. The tension between man-made materials derived from nature combined with seedlings creates a sense of hope as well one of bleakness: nature always finds a way to persevere and yet the human impact on the environment has comprised the health of the environment so much so that more and more, the impact is noticeable and seemingly uncontrollable. By creating an immersive space to think about the human influence on the environment, DeBlassie aims to promote a shift in cultural priorities, elevating fundamental needs and creative reuse of materials instead of wasteful excess. -
The Last Day You Called/ L'últim dia que vas trucar
This installation explores language as a fundamental need, situating and codifying it as a form of architecture or spatial confines which can be entered and in which a person can exist freely.This work was made while I was an artist in residence at Harngar.org in Barcelona. Using references to architecture via bricks and oversized pieces of paper made both from Catalan and Castilian newspapers that resemble housing or buildings, I aim to reflect on the fundamental need of speaking the language native to your tongue and keeping that language alive, spoken, and vibrant, a need that throughout history and contemporaneously has been imperiled in many places. Reconceptualizing language as a kind of psychically charged architectural home inside of which identity is formed, protected, and developed, the installation becomes a kind of linguistic shelter. Some of the pieces feature references to both the Catalan flag as well as simultaneous suggestions towards large extracts of tilled-up earth after a tractor has passed over it, but the earth is in reality paper from Catalan and Castilian newspapers referencing agriculture and the role of farmers in historical Catalan movements. Hidden inside one of the conceptualized horizontal Catalan flags whose stripes resemble tilled-up land is a fully completed puzzle of “Els Segadors” that almost overflows from the sides of the piece. -
Interpretation of a Seed (Collaboration with Maria Nissan)
(See Curator Daria Filardo's text here: http://www.lemuratepac.it/en/interpretaion-of-a-seed-maria-nissan-victoria-de-blassie-a-cura-di-daria-filardo-2/) DeBlassie’s room for “Interpretations of a Seed” reflects upon the inter- and cross-cultural role of the coffee seed. Focusing on Italy and the United States as a points of departure, coffee—not native to either country—reflects vast cultural diffusion and globalization with “American coffee’s” frequently bastardized notions of Italian coffee and in turn the stylized commodification of American coffee culture across Italy. Dissecting these tongue-in-cheek differences, DeBlassie constructs a “Stealth Starbucks” reverse coffee experience via her fictive corporate coffee shop “Starnolds Coffee” where the production and the backstory of coffee are elevated instead of the final product. Playing with notions of the Stealth Starbucks trend in America in which a corporate coffee shop pretends to be an indie coffee shop in appearance and name, DeBlassie creates a fictive corporate coffee shop called Starnold’s Coffee that apes the aesthetics of an indie coffee shop operating under another guise with a completely different name, Ethiocha Koffiehuis. Using the same Stealth Starbucks tactics of cute-styled creative subterfuge and putting up a small disclaimer of “inspired by Strabucks” on the entry door to slyly mask the fact that the “indie coffee shop” is in fact owned by Starbucks, DeBlassie’s Ethiocha Koffiehuis therefore only has a surreptitious little sign on the door stating “Inspired by Starnolds.” DeBlassie’s mockery of the “Stealth Starbucks” model calls into question notions of authenticity and both inter- and cross-cultural appropriation which lends itself to larger conversations regarding the problematics of the globalized coffee trade, in which the cultures that offer the “coffee experience” profit off of labor exploitation of farmers and an environment compromised through deforestation. The name Ethiocha Koffiehuis itself divulges the history of coffee, as Ethiopia was where coffee was first discovered, and Mocha was the trading port of Yemen where Sufis first domestically cultivated it for religious purposes which led to a monopoly, only for the seed to be stolen by the Dutch who first successfully cultivated it in its colonies, hence the name Koffiehuis. At a glance, Ethiocha Koffiehuis, seems like a typical indie coffee shop, but upon closer investigation, the name, the logo, the cute inspirational coffee quote posters, the adorable chalkboards, and many other iconic objects existing in both corporate and “indie” coffee shop aesthetics are in fact subverted and full of historical truths that elevate the colonial, post-colonial, and neo-colonial truth about coffee. All stages of the coffee process including trade, packaging and brewing is also evident in the floors and the chairs that are made from stitched together burlap sacks that once contained the beans, showing the international range of where coffee is procured. Alluding to the various ways coffee can be indulged in depending on the country, DeBlassie’s coffee tables are made from locally collected coffee grounds manipulated into a range of culturally specific filter-shaped sculptures. The installation exists as a space for one to ponder, reflect, and react to the dramatic cultural chaos of a little seed. Through this installation this commonplace seed is examined in its stages of production and consumption, encouraging viewers to think about the larger postcolonial global consequences connected to routine parts of life. By engaging the viewers’ sense of smell, the artwork is experienced in an unconventional way that makes the viewer more aware of their body and their relation to the installation. -
Afterimage
My exhibition and installation Afterimage at SRISA project space, concerns the afterimage or, the positive imprint or negative impression that is observed when looking away from an original image, is an experience that is just as much about how we perceive the world through our bodies and temporal succession as it is about absence and presence, about what we do and don’t perceive at any given moment. It simultaneously confirms and questions the phenomenological certainty of our reality. Afterimage—part of the Gestalt of a Crate series— is a three-room installation and a three-dimensional afterimage immersion made from various color-coordinated plastic cratesvarying according to each room. When moving through the space initially, white, i.e. the absence of color, is the first immersion, followed by a submersion into striking vibrant colors, proceeded by the final room which is predominantly black, viz. the concentration of all color, and like a negative afterimage this process is reversed upon leaving the installation. This passage through space enables the viewer to intensely experience how stimuli are perceived before and after leaving each room and how the afterimage of color or any stimulus on different colors or different stimuli—whether it is white on color, various colors on black and vise-versa—is seen and felt while traversing each specific color field. Reflecting on the absence and presence of each perceptual encounter, and how the visual compensation of trying to comprehend our surroundings as well as how we move through space and time, this ‘procession’ through color fields is meant to draw attention to being aware of our bodies and our relationship to the world and how our bodies function as interpreters of the given realities we face. As in the initial Gestalt of a Crate installation, crates are used as a material because there is an inherent connection to the earth as they were once containers of produce, and since they are recycled, there is also an intrinsic connection to ecological responsibility. With the conceptual implications of the container and how bodies, buildings and the earth itself are containers of life in conjunction with the way they are altered and put together in the Afterimage installation, the work aims to create a corporeal awareness to our impact on the environment and to promote a shift in cultural priorities, elevating fundamental needs and creative reuse of materials instead of wasteful excess. -
The Gestalt of a Crate
Recontextualizing recycled black plastic crates into almost unrecognizable maze-like and cityscape-suggesting forms, I reference through notions of the container some of the most essential needs for survival including environmental wellbeing, shelter, and food. The crate is the container of produce. This connection with agriculture reinforces the integral link with the Earth and its cycles of death and rebirth as one of the most fundamental ecological processes. The human and architectural scale of the installation refers to both the body and architecture as “human” containers inserted into each other like a game of Chinese boxes that then go into the life container par excellence, i.e. the World, which is itself a fragile container that is in danger now more than ever. By cutting, reassembling and thereby altering the black plastic crates, which become small pieces that form a larger whole, I am able to show what I define as the “gestalt” of the crates, to encourage each visitor to reflect on the role that each individual has in maintaining an “ecological” balance. Through the fragmented, magnified, and reflective labyrinth that the grid-like plastic crates, mirrors, and magnified lenses create, I urge viewers to become more conscious about and reflect upon their ecological role in necessitating a labyrinthine perceptual shift in which the contemporary obsession with excess ends and leads to a reexamination of priorities, a new conception of how materials are used and re-used, and a refocus on essential needs. -
Parallel Testo
Parallel Testo reflects on my experience in Italy of being an outsider and trying to gain proficiency in the language. It is made from a small book I found and I used to perfect the language, as it is half in English and half in Italian. The book is cut up line by line, bound by the tanned orange peels, and is supposed to be read standing up. The awkwardness of standing while reading is meant to simulate some of the discomfort of being a foreigner. -
Collect, Skin, Dry, Stitch, Repeat
For my orange peel installations, orange is both an object and a color, simultaneously concrete and abstract. Similarly, I de-familiarize the initial object of the orange into an orange colored textile by stitching the peels together. Through the process of reworking the rinds, the essential characteristics of the initial object are apparent, but almost unrecognizable in the final form. The orange peel textiles I create engage all the senses rather than privileging sight to accentuate how we experience the world through our bodies. I invite the “viewers” to become “sensers” to fully engage their bodies through experiencing art. My intention is that the “sensers” will be transformed like the orange peel material I work with. -
Accumulated Matter
Accumulated Matter was based on the barrel vault architecture found in the most important French orangerie that King Louis XIV had built for him in Versailles. Orangeries were decadent greenhouses that housed oranges and other exotic fruits. France’s fascination with citrus began at the end of 15th century when King Charles VIII of France invaded Italy and he returned to France with an enthrallment with Italian oranges, limes, lemons and limonaia— humble Italian greenhouses for these fruits— and he built the first elaborate orangerie based on the limonaia at his Chateau at Ambosie. For the next 200 years after that initial orangerie, all French Kings had an orangerie as a symbol of their power, the most notable being the aforementioned one that King Louis XIV had constructed in Versailles. Revealing change and development over succeeding centuries, oranges decreased in value cross-culturally as they became ubiquitous and cheap. I am most interested in exploring is how the simple citrus fruits, which coexisted in two adjacent countries in both Italy and France, could spearhead so many different cultural, architectural, and societal evolutions. The exploration of a once powerful fruit that used to define one’s social class that has now become commonplace and virtually meaningless, and what this says about how value is constructed and deconstructed, is a major part of my current research. The installation was a concentrated zone of past and present, so that a visual dialogue was developed between the concocted elements. -
Circular Peel Room
For my orange peel installations, orange is both an object and a color, simultaneously concrete and abstract. Similarly, I de-familiarize the initial object of the orange into an orange colored textile by stitching the peels together. Through the process of reworking the rinds, the essential characteristics of the initial object are apparent, but almost unrecognizable in the final form. The orange peel textiles I create engage all the senses rather than privileging sight to accentuate how we experience the world through our bodies. I invite the “viewers” to become “sensers” to fully engage their bodies through experiencing art. My intention is that the “sensers” will be transformed like the orange peel material I work with. -
Smell Walls
For my orange peel installations, orange is both an object and a color, simultaneously concrete and abstract. Similarly, I de-familiarize the initial object of the orange into an orange colored textile by stitching the peels together. Through the process of reworking the rinds, the essential characteristics of the initial object are apparent, but almost unrecognizable in the final form. The orange peel textiles I create engage all the senses rather than privileging sight to accentuate how we experience the world through our bodies. I invite the “viewers” to become “sensers” to fully engage their bodies through experiencing art. My intention is that the “sensers” will be transformed like the orange peel material I work with.