SOME INSTALLATIONS
IN CASE OF DOUBT
Are our convictions indisputable? Is our perception of things really objective? Are we afraid to topple our principles to see what lies behind them? Between certainty and suspicion there is doubt.
The initial installation consists of a sitting room. The artist reads a book, quietly sitting in an armchair. There is one anomaly: the floor and the wall are inverted. The order of things will be
upset and the role of objects will be subverted.
Le Lieu, Québec, 2014
Colli Independent, Roma, 2016
COSMIC GEMS
The world is falling apart. Hope is vanishing. Suddenly, strange organisms from a parallel universe surface in the basement of Via Nerino.
The cosmic gems seem to be alien organisms that probe, express doubts, offer redemption, a hope for a long awaited regeneration.
PROJECT ROOM, Nuova Galleria Morone 14 MAGGIO - 19 GIUGNO 2015
COSMIC CRYSTAL
The world is falling apart. Hope is vanishing. Suddenly, a strange yellow light appears from the sacred well of the Madonna del Pozzo Chapel in Spoleto. Did it come from the depths of the earth, from another galaxy, or from a parallel dimension?
Opus & Light, Madonna del Pozzo, Spoleto, September 2014
THE NIGHT WATCH
From a timeless office, a security guard is controlling a parallel operation on a surveillance monitor. Six cameras record the course of events from an unidentified site. What is he protecting? What are the cameras observing? Does the operation exist without the watch guard?
Using a playful and absurd process this installation/performance explores the precariousness of our perception, inspired by the illustration of quantum mechanics through the paradox of Schrödinger's cat. The performance The Night Watch combines synchronous perception with uncanny staged events. The viewer is free to go straight through the rabbit hole into the experiment, and become a part of the simultaneous reality.
Lilith Performance Studio, Malmö, 21-23 March 2013
ONLY THIS AND NOTHING MORE (small version)
An organism is generated out of a small heap of sticks on a shelf and forms a neural reticulum. It crosses the wall, leans on a pillar of tomes of the Encyclopedia Britannica, then on a column of glass tableware and crosses back to the front wall. Strange inflorescences, small oil paintings and wax sculptures hang on the walls.
This version was installed at the Centre PHI in Montréal in the Pop-up exhibition curated by Donald Browne in 2013
ONLY THIS AND NOTHING MORE
This installation-performance is about the hidden side of certainties.
In this era of mass media, we are bombarded with information and establish our beliefs on rumours, third or fifth hand hearsay, eagerly proclaimed by politicians and public figures. These beliefs turn to convictions, and convictions become dogmas. Fundamentalisms of all sorts originate from these dogmas, based on wrong interpretations of wrong quotes of wrong definitions of anonymous sources.
All this puts me into a deep state of permanent doubt.
An organism is generated out of a small heap of sticks on a shelf and forms a neural reticulum. It crosses walls, leans on a pillar of tomes of the Encyclopedia Britannica, then on a column of glass tableware. Strange inflorescences, coloured wax balls, small oil paintings and wax sculptures hang on walls and from ceilings.
Il Ponte Contemporanea, Rome, Nov. 2012 - Jan. 2013
NEURONS
What we think of as our mental life involves the activities of the nervous system, especially the brain. This nervous system is composed of billions of cells, the most essential being the nerve cells or neurons, electrically excitable cells that process and transmit information.
Neurons are the oldest and longest cells in the body. You have many of the same neurons for your whole life. Although other cells die and are replaced, many neurons are never replaced.
Considering the political situation in the world today, it seems that many neurons are in crisis, are subjected to short circuits, or have taken on a life of their own like Hal 2000. The computing of all the information available seems to go wild provoking one disaster after the other.
Based on this conjecture these sculptures try to illustrate the malfunctioning of leaders’ brains by trying to connect recycled organic materials (pruned branches, cherry pits and latex). Of course, short circuits occur.
Il Ponte Contemporanea, 2009
FATA MORGANA
The project was to create a total alteration of a space with a dreamlike video installation investigating remote throbbing obsessions. The setting of an obsolete shabby hotel was created in a old print shop: windows, doors, carpeting, wallpaper, furniture, curtains, etc.. The rooms are loaded with memories and dreams and some pending events come back to life. The space is at street level of the ex-Cerere pasta factory located on via Tiburtina in the San Lorenzo neighbourhood in Rome. Outside the door, there is a “HOTEL” sign.
Fondazione Cerere / Gallery Apart, Rome 2008
ANARCHIE RESPLENDISSANTE
For this painting exhibition, I decided to modify some battery operated toys and have them paint for me. They made the paintings the night of the opening in Galerie Page 22, Barjols (France) 2007
LUPUS IN FABULA
This installation-performance was first presented at the Annina Nosei Gallery in New York in 2005.
Other versions were made for the Moderna Galerija in Ljubljana and the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna in Rome.
The installation with video of the performance was presented at Volume! in Rome.
ELIXIR
Concepts of body and space merge in Elixir. The artist has fully exploited the particularities of Volume!’s space setting up an installation that alters the overall volume of the space. It has in fact been turned into an unusual laboratory for research in genetic modification, where a solitary scientist experiments her own manipulating madness. From this perturbing and theatrical setting the Elixir installation aims to stimulate considerations on the themes of genetic modification as a metaphor for media mystifications and mental conditioning. This “small theatre of experimental folly” partly explores themes linked to mechanisms of control and centralized social coercion which have already inspired the artist in the past.
Genetically modified beings are created to become her slaves by being exposed to the elixir of life. The elixir doesn’t work and they whistle cheerfully as they are destroyed by the experimental madness.
Laplante’s performance for the opening emphasizes its initial premise by experimenting her own hysterical genetic monstrosities in person.
Teresa Macrì
Fondazione Volume!, Rome, 2004
ALL IS GOING ACCORDING TO PLAN
This installation/performance is about mice and monkeys and rabbits and power. When things get out of hand, there is always a general or a president that talks to the nation and says: « All is going according to plan ». After seeing documentaries and doing some research about what happens behind the scenes, I decided to do some work that deals with the issue: a simulation of a secret military laboratory.
Outside the space is my personal little army, in a “desert” made out of mountains of cinnamon. The “lab” is set up to carry out experiments on rabbits, monkeys and mice (toys) on an operating table in the middle of the space, with bunsen burners, surgical instruments, in dim lighting. The monkeys and rabbits are tortured and the mice are dipped in chocolate to prove my “good intentions”. On the floor, there are images of prison camps, real and science-fiction weapons, mind-control devices, etc.
The installation from 2003 is permanent at the Certosa di San Lorenzo, in Padula, Italy.