Installation art
-SURVIVING MAKES NOISE-
2024 © Léna Piani
Survival blankets suspended in the wind of a Mediterranean garden.
Like so many saved destinies, brilliant or lost and fragile, caught in the storm, in this noise so shattering and heady.
What do migrants hear in the storm? What do the lucky ones who managed to arrive, huddled in the crumpled paper of survival, between the cold and the heat, hear? What do they feel in this light protection?
Can we cross this field of light, shimmering leaves without thinking of those who have not reached the shore?
Faced with Vesuvius, with the memory of the region’s tragic history, and then with its prosperity. Faced with the threat of natural and man-made hazards.
A reflection on survival.
Site-specific installation.
19 survival blankets, rope, clothespins,
the sound effect of this wind-blown material.
Courtyard of the house hosting artists in residence. KulturFactory artists’residency.
Domicella, Italy, July 2024.
-CIEL BLEU, NUAGES EN FEU-
2024 © Léna Piani
How does it feel to be under a survival blanket? What do you see from there when you dare to look at the accident, perhaps still hiding a little?
Through these incandescent gold and silver, like a moment of respite for the injured, the migrant, the survivor.
Faced with Vesuvius, with the memory of the region’s tragic history, and then with its prosperity. Faced with the threat of natural and man-made hazards.
A reflection on survival.
Experimental video art, 6mins 42secs.
Filmed and edited during my stay at the Kulturfactory artists’residency, opposite Mount Vesuvius, in Domicella, Italy. July 2024.
Music by Eteipapula.
Each red nose, « red as fire, spherical as earth, airy as a bubble », « the smallest mask in the world » (Jacques Lecoq in Le Théâtre du Geste, 1987) is a drop of blood, the imprint of repeated violence.
The nose is also the seat of anger.
As the spectator approaches, he places himself at the centre of the focus, questioned by both the lightness of the object and the seriousness of the subject.
Circular copper-coloured steel wire, 73 foam clown noses, nylon thread.
-LA RIVE OU L’INFINI-
What do I do with the horizon I’m looking at? Is it the shore or infinity?
The volume of lived space, the aerial cartography of a tumultuous interior landscape, where the elements mingle. The materialization of an abstract territory that drifts in this dreamed spatiality.
Foam, wave, shore, cloud, storm, fire, the red tip of the accident that creates history.
« In front of the deep water, you choose your vision; you can see the motionless bottom or the current, the shore or the infinite ; you have the ambiguous right to see or not to see ; you have the right to live with the boatman or to live with « a new race of hard-working fairies, gifted with perfect taste, magnificent and meticulous ». The water fairy, guardian of the mirage, holds all the birds of the sky in her hand.
A puddle contains a universe.
A moment of dreaming contains an entire soul. »
« Devant l’eau profonde, tu choisis ta vision ; tu peux voir à ton gré le fond immobile ou le courant, la rive ou l’infini ; tu as le droit ambigu de voir et de ne pas voir ; tu as le droit de vivre avec le batelier ou de vivre avec « une race nouvelle de fées laborieuses, douées d’un goût parfait, magnifiques et minutieuses ». La fée des eaux, gardienne du mirage, tient tous les oiseaux du ciel dans sa main. Une flaque contient un univers. Un instant de rêve contient une âme entière. »
L’eau et les rêves — Essai sur l’imagination de la matière (1941), Gaston Bachelard.
White synthetic wadding, iron mesh, white and red LED string lights, 340cm x130cm.
