“Altro da sé”, a mosaic by Laura Carraro. A portrait narrating what is invisible to the eye
Altro da sé – Other than self
Which is the meaning of portrait? What is the artist conveying when she/he is doing a portrait?
Laura Carraro focused on these matters when she realized her last work “Altro da sé” (Other than self), a contemporary mosaic made with marbles, dark mirror and 63 meters of silicon and pvc tubes. In this period, the artwork is displayed at the EContemporary Gallery in Trieste, that gathers five mosaic artists in the Ri-Tratti collective exhibition.
The word “ritratti” means “portraits”, but the sign that divide the word in two parts (ri-tratti) suggests that the exhibition is not about traditional portrait. The topic is actually wide, a meditation on contemporary society and the relationships with oneself and with others.
“Contemporary portrait can’t be enclosed in one identity, in a precise colour or in a certain reality only”.
“Nowadays, humanity’s destiny is intersection: of peoples, races, cultures. That’s why I worked on mixture, where identity isn’t depending from colour. It’s a hybrid identity, that is continuously changing and evolving, but developing from the same ground, the human being.
I tried to express this idea through the use of tubes in the mosaic: as they have different transparency gradations, they “draw” squares of different colours, even if the white background is always the same. The same mixture of whites, near to the different kinds of tubes, change its aspect, reflecting varying shades.
If portrait was only a realistic and physiognomic representation, a simple passport photo would be enough. The difference between a passport photo and an artist’s work is that the artist includes in the portrait something that is invisible to the eye.
“In the centre of the mosaic there’s a mirror, that isn’t made for people to look at themselves (it’s cut and it’s dark), but who’s in front of the work can recognize himself. Around the mirror, with the tubes, I drew some squares (the same shape of the mirror repeated with different transparency effects). With these squares I invite the observer to look outside of the mirror, to observe what is other than himself. The squares are of different dimensions, one inside the other, and there’s one that goes outside of the work.
I think that contemporary portrait can’t be enclosed in one identity, in a precise colour or in a certain reality only”.
Tubes and surfaces
This work is part of my research on surfaces and tubes used as tesserae. But there’s a difference: in the other works tubes were the protagonists, concentrated in one “explosing” side; in this case the tubes are at the service of the work. Through the use of tubes I create an effect, I reflect on transparency and colour.
THE WORKS OF LAURA CARRARO AND MOHAMED CHABARIK WILL BE DISPLAYED AT ECONTEMPORARY GALLERY IN TRIESTE, VIA CRISPI 28, UNTIL 28th FEBRUARY 2015.
[Interview by Laura Pizzini]
