Seven Underwater

2022

Installation: seven engraved silver teaspoons, seven photographic prints 60 x 80 cm with relief printing, audio

Variable dimensions

"Seven Underwater" aims to reflect on the relationship between word, sound and memory. "What happens to words once they have penetrated us?". 

It moves from a previous work consisting of seven silver teaspoons on which I had engraved as many words that I would like to remain after the end of the world. In the installation “Seven Underwater” they are presented with seven black and white images of the teaspoons seen from above, under which we find printed individually - in white on white in relief - each of the seven words, in a sort of silent primer. The work is completed by an audio that reproduces a set of sentences - born from the combination of the seven words and pronounced by the car's computer - which overlap each other to the point of generating a sort of white noise. 

The installation has taken different forms over time, depending on the environment in which it was placed.

The title alludes to the journey of the seven words, arriving in the inner dimension, called "underwater". Once they fall inside, they lose their substance, change their nature and perceptive status: the word thought for myself is very different from that thought to communicate with the outside. In the first we find a sort of purity: it becomes a universal category because it is intended for me alone, there is no sharing or negotiation involved. The word pronounced endlessly for the masses is different: it overlaps and loses meaning. It can even be spoken by a machine, since it no longer makes any difference. The only truly generative one is the one engraved on the spoons, intended for communication, to unite inside and outside.