Touching Realities
For a few months now Italy has been harshly struck by the Covid-19 crisis. It is through language that the country found a way to divulge a message of hope across the planet. The hashtag #andratuttobene has found its translation everywhere and became a universal code for Humanity to understand that we communicate the same culture of resilience. This national emblem finds a translation almost everywhere in the world and comes to lodge in our ears like the refrain of a catchy pop song. In Quebec, the Italian slogan translates “Ça va bien aller”, and symbolizes the quiet and united force of the Québecois people toward the pandemic crisis.
In this series of 8 digital scanned images the slogan “Ça va bien aller” is translated into a numerical code of “1” and “0” pixels as a way to understand language as a mathematical and universal ground for communication. While the binary code is not a spoken language it offers the possibility to be visually interpreted in infinite ways. As digital communication is becoming the only way to correspond with one another, digital code is evidently enhancing the support and the means of our social interactions. These images then propose to embody metadata as both the signifier and the signified for a language becoming the medium of the message.
Each image is constructed around one pair of medical gloves and personal items found in my apartment during the quarantine. Like many artists around the world, the confinement pushed me to be creative with limited resources and materials. Nonetheless the series portray medicinal articles linked to the lack of medical items such as medicine pills, lotions or balms. The images also connect to the fragility or our bodies and remind us of our frail physicality, through the plasticity of the sculptures, but also the docility of the materials. Through haptic sculptures this series is reinterpreting the reality of our senses of touch and feel. The softness of the scanned surface becomes the skin and pores for our eyes to touch.
Finally, Touching Realities represents what is essential during this time of crisis, through the importance of a universal message we share as a community in order to feel connected to one another within our digital and touched realities.
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