Silvia Celeste Calcagno, the theme is all here.
What we are shown is an existential diary in which the artist describes herself with images that gradually reconstruct the entire dimension of an existence, by means of sensations and suggestions.
The artist offers herself to us with simplicity; she places her body and her life in front of us, and in doing so she offers her life to herself, with narratives, memories and dreams. And we too become personally involved, because, as in a mirror, we can be surprised by images that lay in our unconscious, with mutually-referential views.
Works by Silvia Celeste are hallmarked by an ambivalent, extremely intimate air of mystery. Initially they attract us and induce us to observe more closely in order to gain a better understanding, but then they activate our sense of confidentiality, and they make us take a step back in order not to impinge on the private world facing us.
It is a crude narrative, in parts, or slices – the metaphor could be taken to the extremes to underline the work’s extreme carnality – in which the body suddenly becomes ethereal, without substance, sometimes absurdly abstract. We see some hints but without perceiving an excessively detailed description.
In the layout specially designed for the two halls of the library Biblioteca Classense, which have now been reopened and are accessible to the public, the new language of the artist’s latest works can be compared with that of just a few years ago, heightening the dialogue between figuration and abstraction even further, between recognisability and mystery, between space and volume, in which the body remains the subject around which a personal, intimate alphabet is developed.
This alphabet is thus used to tell a story: as in an unbound book, the pages of a life are jumbled, juxtaposed chaotically. The images are given absolute dominance, and the protagonist of the work, initially the subject, becomes the object of attention, and becomes something different to what the camera lens immortalizes in a moment, an image that is further alienated by the monochromatic treatment.
The story thus becomes something different, and its meaning seems to become lost while concentrating the attention onto each individual element, in itself so attractive, but excessively indecipherable if considered in isolation from the work as a whole. We can detect meaning only by shifting our viewpoint, reconnecting every single slab into an overall vision that can bind the details together. In this way we can escape from the details and take part in the Being laid bare in front of us, enabling us to discover the way in which each tiny fragment, apparently insignificant and unfathomable, itself encapsulates the meaning of the whole.
As if in a classical mosaic, every piece has its own place, but what unfolds in front of us is not simply an image: it is the result of a demanding process of introspection on female identity, with the eternal dichotomy between the body, a limited and limiting object, and the aspiration for freedom from weight, escape beyond limits, becoming something else.
The narrative of a life, of an existence, is simply this: putting together images, memories and fragments which, brought together, can give us the sensations, experiences and traits that formed it. And in this case, the central part of this exhibition titled Il pasto bianco (The white lunch) amplifies with excess this aspect of the work’s intrinsic vitality, to the point that, as there is nothing more than the artist’s sense of life, this is itself changed and developed as the work progresses.
In addition to physical presence and sensuality, it was necessary to place a sort of curtain, a filter, to protect that body that was acquiring too much of an objective identity, becoming too cold and aseptic. Reality is not, in itself, as clean as the work was initially suggesting, a memory that exists in traces in some parts of the installation. The drama in which we, in many ways, are immersed, and that surrounds us, could not be silenced, and it is as if it emerged uncontrollably from the finished work.
The object independently desired to return to its status as a subject: the woman’s body could not resist its definition as an object, provocative though this may be.
That initial, ideal move towards purity therefore seems to be restrained and castrated by the physicality and weight of matter itself, as if it were this that made it impossible to attain the sublime dimension so anxiously coveted. It is here that the new features of this work surprise us, because it shows us how it is precisely through materiality and our bodily existence that we can learn and understand our own Being to the full. Our ideal tension can only attain expression and maturity through our own body, which is therefore not a prison, but a springboard…
This is visually narrated by the type of installation chosen, in which the work becomes a sort of wallpaper, a skin covering the hall and occupying the space, giving it life and a unitary dimension, as if wanting to provide direct experience by placing the body into direct contact. Il pasto bianco arose from, and was strongly inspired – in terms of both narrative technique and content – by the literary work by W.S. Burroughs The Naked Lunch – later made into a film by D. Cronenberg – a masterpiece constructed from apparently disjointed episodes, reassembling sheets of text written almost unconsciously by the author, and reordered successively by means of the Dada “cut-up” technique.
The narrative structure is completed by two works that Silvia decided to install in continuity and direct relation with the first piece.
In 5 breve freddo, a video suspended between theatricality and intimacy, we are transported and immersed, as if unwary spectators, into a crude dialogue set in a mysterious location rendered distinctive by a flame-red colour, as if in part a cherished love nest (since destroyed), and in part a fiery asteroid that seems to have just fallen, devastating existence and annihilating everything known and loved. The resigned, monotone voice in the background – interrupted as is often the case in life – is juxtaposed against the scene’s latent sensuality, and everything is combined and blended, creating the sensation of a relationship that has cooled off and has seemingly reached a point of no return, perhaps.
But the thing that is impossible to grasp is the identity of the personalities involved, and one thinks that perhaps that it is “just” a monologue in which the protagonist of Il pasto bianco reflects aloud, while immersed in the rituals of everyday life, as suggested by the sound of a washing machine in the background.
The physical dimension returns strongly in the latest work, Una storia privata (A private story), in which nature nonetheless replaces the artist’s body as the subject of the piece.
Increasingly abstract, the narrative proceeds in the almost dancing lines of leaves and trunks, as if the artist were making a final attempt to break free of her physical nature and to describe herself by means of images stolen from nature, presenting herself with figures far more imposing than her own, as if this could represent a form of succour in her quest and struggle.
In the silence of these views, the plants, carrying the artist’s emotions, swaying and writhing in their attempt to gain attention, transmit the feeling that not even this subterfuge will resolve Silvia’s voyage: her body, her persona, remain the “location” in which her liberation will have to take place, so that at last she will be able to savour the long-coveted meaning of completion, on her own skin.
Davide Cairoli