Francesca Alaimo

Exile

For weeks the word "exile" has been resonating in my head. At first it seemed to be a mental and emotional space directly related to the condition of living abroad. However, it soon appeared to be deep and multi-layered, with entangled roots that spread indefinitely.

"Exile" is a project that explores themes of identity, immigration, homeland, be-longing, struggle, vulnerability, intimacy and privacy.

The Pause. This work portrays a moment of stillness that occurs before, in between and after the rounds of a struggle. Deliberately focusing on the inaction rather than the action, The Pause is laden by gravity and anticipation. It is a time when the conflict is interiorised and the idleness becomes charged with the personal and the private. Time and place unknown, identity concealed, nationality hinted at, the boxer is intentionally depicted in the most vulnerable moment.

The Green Room. The title of this work recalls theatre and performance, the suspended time in-between the acts. Preceding appearance and hidden from view, it is a space that can induce reflection and tempt one to reconsider the parts, set by society and perhaps transgressed by the individual, that one plays in one's own identity. Walls, like boundaries and borders, hide and protect, but also limit and contain - our own performance suspended, we are left alone with our character and with ourselves. In "The Green Room", taken in my parents' bathroom in Rome, limitation, potentiality and revelation are symbolised by the shapes around my body: the wall, the curtain, the mirror. In this space echoing hidden self and staged values but also home, nurturing, and belonging, opposite forces work with and against each other, revolving around a fulcrum, the reflection of my intimate and private self.

Unfold Movimento 1,2,3

Using my own image I contemplate, deconstruct and transform my identity.
I interlace the melancholy and passion of living in London in the 21st century with Classical references from my Italian childhood. The Baroque game of dark and light, hiding and revealing mingles with my urge to communicate and understand myself. Unfold Movimento 1,2,3 is a challenge to the notion of gender and sexuality as binary. Claiming the space usually held by a male body, I twist the conventional and unfold my reality into existence. This escape from the established boundaries of manhood and womanhood is an intensely grounding experience that engages while encouraging the subversion of the expected.

Work selected as a part of the gayWise 2009 festival in London.

Digressions

Based on six paintings by Italian artist Caravaggio, these photographs are almost exact re-enactments of the original paintings with the one exception - I have replaced the body of male protagonists with my own. The staging of each painting is both a replica and a self-portrait referencing my Italian heritage and my androgynous identity. The metamorphosis is deliberately left incomplete and a disquieting incongruity occurs between this new unexpected protagonist and the classical connotation of the original work. In real life Caravaggio's models were vagabonds, criminals and prostitutes, but in his paintings they were transformed into religious and mythical subjects. The result is a restrained and unsettling tension between appearance and essence. In this context, Digressions of Self is a re-gendering of icons and a re-possession of qualities traditionally considered to be male: courage, wisdom, boldness and strength. This escape from established boundaries of manhood and womanhood challenges the assumptions of a binary sexual category system and rebels against social limitations on gender conformity.

March 13th, 2010 - Dark & Lovely, group exhibition at Parlor Gallery, Asbury Park, New Jersey, USA.

Geologie

I specifically created the video ´Geologie´ for the international Earth Day festival celebration in Medellin, Colombia (22 April 2007). It is intended as a mantra for the earth. Numerous people are expressing their most affection for the earth in their own native language. It is a wish of regeneration and a message of hope from all over the world. It is coming from London, a city as diverse as the people who inhabit it. .