Toothpaste chronicles #2

Contemporary Bites Archive

Bite #14 by Agnese Spolverini

2020/05/16

Middle of Nowhere, Italy

WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE US TO KNOW ABOUT YOU?

I’m Agnese Spolverini (1994, Viterbo, Italy).
Right now, I’m living and working in the middle of Nowhere, I’ve just come back from Milan.
I mainly work with installation and my research focuses on emotions and intimacy, on suspended situations between reality and imaginary and on a continuous sliding between the objectification of the human and the humanization of the object.

Self Portrait as Basil, 2020

HOW DID THE COVID-19 BREAKDOWN AFFECT YOUR WORK AS AN ARTIST?

In this period, I haven’t had the chance to access the studio and to live times and places of the world as I used to. Instead of finding myself into a generative vacuum, I’ve felt like I was in a suffocating nothingness. The lock- down has often led me into a strong state of apathy and lack of concentration from which sometimes I luckily have been pulled out by my artistic practice, a practice that is accustomed to expanding in places but which in this period has managed to adapt to the contraction offered by the domestic space and to the media that I could use in it.

HAS YOUR WAY OF THINKING/PRODUCING ART CHANGED? IN WHAT WAY?

This crisis has highlighted contemporary world’s problems, which I was already aware of, but if earlier there were urgencies whispered in my ears, now I can hear them screaming.
Despite the contemporary hyper-speed, I’m moving at a slow pace. Now I feel the change but I don’t know exactly what shape it will take, however I am ready to welcome it as I’ve always done.