I was born in 1977 under the Leaning Tower of Pisa, from a father born in Gondar, Ethiopia and a mother born in via del Mare, Livorno, who grew up among the Florence’ good society.
My granparents went to Africa from Apulien, my gran father was a doctor, son of a doctor, probably son of a Monk of the Abbey of Polignano a Mare. (DEAR LUCY 2023 RILABEN PAZ)
Talking about my research today is not easy. My spontaneous research began as a child with the observation of nature, women’s costumes, drawing. It developed into pop music, dance, make-up, a childhood between queer and a bourgeoise family, the countryside and travelling twice a year to follow my father’s cardiological meetings. Then an identity discontinuity, a teen ager going to theatre, contemporary art, the 20th century, the avant-gardes, the matter of Italian arte povera, the set design. Then the recovery of the body, after a crise a coming out, dance theatre in Florence and the Nikolais technique from New York city, together with other American ascendants of late modern and post modern and at the same time studies in Architecture in Florence. On these premises and literature, my imagination was formed between the solitary dimension and sharing, like in a program of performing artists in residency in Bilbao, between the stage and exhibition spaces, public, outdoors, schools. From the first work I present, are already present in Potenza elements of more or less conscious reflection on gender, society, criticism of elements of the capitalist economy, pollution, the traditional way of understanding art. Also about technique and methodology, dramaturgy of the dancer and actor, as a virtuoso technique of control and skill.
Here today, my research focuses on cavities, the passage from its philosophical aesthetic meaning, as with W. Benjamin and Deleuze, ‘Passage’ as with M. Perniola Inorganic sex-appeal, after F.L. Wright in organic architecture. The fascination of modernism, the form, the rational lines, the alienation of design and then the human, biographical, cultural component, which divides and unifies, if one goes beyond the border. The awareness of belonging to an iconographic culture of shapes and colours in art, like that of privilege, relative and not absolute, of coming from Tuscany. Putting oneself at stake, to what extent? The mental health, the working condition of the man, how the critical artist can manage his act in time and historical space, universal and personal political position.
My research mixes, focuses on an anti-colonial approach talking about the colonial past of my country, my family, talking about tradition, even food, music in Italy, to understand what the norm and queer is for me.
My research in performance that no longer has a specific place, and whose fruition is no longer frontal or formal, but free, like an installation of bodies, voices, sounds. The beginning of the practice of international curating, welcoming the other’s point of view and researching on different elements together with other artists, without losing one’s uniqueness.
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RILABEN 