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Spreaded out / 2014-15

/photograph, diasec, 100x100 cm/

The series Spread Out (2013) stems from the following associations. Furniture that is not being used and has been “put aside for some time” is often covered with white overlay. White is the color of purity, of a certain absence of emotionality, of innocence, but also of sadness and death. Clothes are something that transcends the purely physical, they constitute a barrier between the physical body and the environment. Through our attire, we deliver a certain message about ourselves. Also, in a way, clothing defines the quality of movement.
Man needs to intervene with his invention in his environment and give it a shape according to his own taste. The first element through which we address our environment and which touches us directly is our clothes. Clothing is the first signal through which we send information about ourselves. The environment we inhabit, our home, our furniture, all this we also create as an imprint of ourselves – the resident of our rooms. What we have created, what we surround ourselves with, in turn influences us and, in a way, contributes to form who we are. 
We cover our body with clothes to hide something and, at the same time, to send a new message about ourselves, and about our body, a message transformed by our mind. And in doing so, we give others an instruction manual as to how to read the image we convey of ourselves.
Oversized clothes renounce the possibility of movement; as a piece of clothing, they become practically dysfunctional. In these photographs, they take the role of a sort of curtain covering the furniture and the common objects of the household which remain only as hidden, sensed presences, colorless and as if medically sterile, and therefore, in fact, alienated. As if they were only awaiting their self-definition.
The various pieces of furniture are objects used in common by all the inhabitants of the household. They are inherent set pieces of our home and contribute to its specific “climate”. The main association one naturally makes with home is that of the mother, that is to say of feminine energy. A healthily functioning motherly principle is forthcoming on the outside, giving, secure. In this context, I perceive a set table, a covered bed or sofa as objects endowed with feminine energy. Through her clothes, the woman links herself with these objects. She becomes an integral part of her environment with even more intensity, yet her true, “forthcoming” nature remains hidden.
Similarly, thanks to the spread out cloths, the way we read the “climate” of the environment is suddenly altered and questions arise about the nature of what is depicted. Thus, photography serves as a message about the character of the “climate” of a given environment.