Stretched Perm, 2014
51 offset prints on paper,
30 × 40.5cm (each)
The work comprises a series of ongoing prints of inked hair bundles. Each picture is an isolated and discontinuous piece but aligned up, and they appear as an infinite continuity. The work refers to the concept of history, representing and constructing past events as a continuous process and sometimes even as a narrative plot. The choice of the material hair (which I consider a synecdoche for aging) and the series of discontinuous frames is an inversion of this idea since it refers symbolically to the double fact that any access to what has been being based on individual memories and the private experience. In this respect, the past is “naturally” discontinuous, and any attempt to make it appear different is suspect to political interests.
As the sample shows, the black ink prints of hair seem to continue from one print to the other. The number of frames can vary, given the spatial conditions of the exhibition. The ongoing threads that represent the positive way of appropriating and constructing history as a continuity of events, which are at least explainable in retrospect. The frame, instead, underlines that history is, moreover a collection of fragments.
The individual appropriations of time through personal experiences and its representations as history, relate to each other through the human body, brain, memory, and age. In other words, history is human, and everything human is exposed to aging. That means history is aging too, and the long human hair dipped in black ink can be considered a synecdoche for both, the individual experience of time and the ongoing processes of tradition and historiography. Both seem to be continuous, but the fact that they are not is as sure as the death of every individual and their memories.
As the sample shows, the black ink prints of hair seem to continue from one print to the other. The number of frames can vary, given the spatial conditions of the exhibition. The ongoing threads that represent the positive way of appropriating and constructing history as a continuity of events, which are at least explainable in retrospect. The frame, instead, underlines that history is, moreover a collection of fragments.
The individual appropriations of time through personal experiences and its representations as history, relate to each other through the human body, brain, memory, and age. In other words, history is human, and everything human is exposed to aging. That means history is aging too, and the long human hair dipped in black ink can be considered a synecdoche for both, the individual experience of time and the ongoing processes of tradition and historiography. Both seem to be continuous, but the fact that they are not is as sure as the death of every individual and their memories.