Silvia Bigi from Milan
How your way of working has changed?
Definitely my times, usually very tight, they have dilated. Although I always have the impression that the hours fly by, I tried to indulge myself, beyond the actual work, spaces for contemplation, of research, of thought. I have processed texts and revised projects left open, I have taken important readings that have been set aside for too long, like Jacques Rancière's “The Emancipated Spectator”, "Capital" by Marx and some essays by Jung, that, as well as proving to be excellent allies in my research, they are providing me with tools to better understand the present tense.
With which objects and spaces of your daily life are you interacting the most?
I live in Milan, in the Isola district, and (I can tell now) luckily my studio is my home. Maybe that's why my work routine hasn't changed much. The studio overlooks the internal courtyard in an old Milanese railing house, a micro-universe with its colors, smells and sounds. The gazes inevitably meet, they share moments and brief chats, to then return each to their own life. Many artists live in the palace, friends with whom the dialogue is active and constant. More, I share the apartment with my husband, Luca Maria Baldini, also an artist: musicista e sound artist. So art pervades our spaces 24 hours a day, as well as the comparison, listening, mutual stimulation. If this house used to be the center of my artistic practice, now it's my whole world. I thought I would feel impatient for small shared spaces e, instead, it seems that every day they widen a little, to make room for strategies and insights. What I really miss, in addition to breathing in the open air, It's the nature, especially the mountain.
How do you imagine the world, when everything will start again?
I often think about it and despite the fact that the imagination is running dangerously on these issues, sometimes prefiguring apocalyptic scenarios and others conveyed by resilient and optimistic thinking, I felt almost immediately that nothing would be the same as before. We are facing a profound and radical transformation of the world as we know it. I believe deeper than what we want to believe and accept at this moment. As artists we have the task of preparing ourselves, but also to prepare, leaving a glimpse of thresholds, small cracks in reality that can be occasions for the regeneration of thought, or even real perceptual change. Personally, I'm not afraid of facing a new world: what I fear most is the deep attachment to what has been, to the world as I have known it up to now.
Silvia Bigi (Ravenna, 1985), she graduated from Dams in Bologna. Through the use of different languages - photography, installation, sculpture, sound, video, textiles - his work explores the relationship between individual and collective memories and at the same time the impact that ideologies and superstructures have on our reality. His works, today part of public and private collections, they have been awarded as well as selected for important exhibitions, including the exhibition Engaged, active, aware: women’s perspective now, vincitrice del Lucie Award Best Exhibition nel 2018. His latest work, From Dust you came (and to dust you shall return), was presented at the MLZ Art Dep, Trieste, in the exhibition Pink, Purple and Blue, edited by Francesca Lazzarini. www.silviabigi.com