Secci gallery presents the new exhibitions “Protection” featuring work by Claire Fontaine at “NOVO,” a Milanese program dedicated to contemporary experimentation seen through the eye of one single curator, today recognized in the person of Pier Paolo Pancotto.
Liber* Tutt* (2023) “Everybody Free” is a large sign that manifests in the space the problem of the epicene language and the strategies used to overcome it. The asterisk that prevents the gendered ending of the two words acts as a performative graphic gesture, meaning to free us from the conditioning that comes with gender stereotypes and that limit our lives within patriarchal society. After a summer in Italy where the consequences of freedom for the male and female gender has been put under scrutiny because of multiple events involving femicide and rape, we wish through this sign to restore the obvious: freedom is not inhibition and it’s not abuse, it’s understanding what connects us to each other and honoring it outside of the violent conventions that we have accepted as “normality.”
Protect Me From What I Don’t Want (2023) is a sculpture made with the artisanal technique of sign-making used for religious celebrations and festivities in the public space in southern Italy. The arched form of the frame, where sit the geometric and crude letters designed by the artist, is reminiscent of the shape of the sign that stands on top of the gate of the Auschwitz concentration camp “Arbeit macht frei.” The content (protect me from what I don’t want) is a hijack of Jenny Holzer’s iconic illuminated slogan Protect Me From What I Want that was exhibited in 1982 on one of the screens of Times Square. The ambiguous meaning of the original truism can be attributed to the conflicting impulses coming from the desire inducing commercials or from feminine desires within a patriarchal society. Claire Fontaine instead states the obvious with this almost superstitious phrase that expresses no doubt or ambivalence about what or who should be avoided. The work acts like a sort of talisman.
at SECCI, Milan
until November 11, 2023