Marta Margnetti dedicates a “Serenata” (Italian for serenade) to the ladies in her household and explores domesticity, reminiscence and generational trajectories with completely different media. In her seek for the worldviews and self-perceptions of the ladies in her household, Margnetti collects recollections, sounds and atmospheres, weaving them into varied supplies. Her largest institutional exhibition in German-speaking Switzerland so far assembles ceramics, conventional building methods, delicate bronzes, sound installations and located objects.

On the core of her solo exhibition is a private sound piece based mostly on an change together with her mom. In Autoritratto con mamma (credenza), engl. Self-portrait with mum (cabinet), Margnetti information a dialog together with her mom, recalling recollections of her grandmother. By modifying out the phrases, solely the sounds of the 2 ladies listening, considering, and remembering stay. They offer life to a easy Nineteen Sixties kitchen cabinet, stripped of its layers of paint and restored to its unique look by the artist.

One other work is devoted to Margnetti’s paternal grandmother, who used to pinch her cheeks as a baby. She recreates this key reminiscence together with her mom within the video work Autoritratto con mamma (pizzicotti), engl. Self-portrait with mum (pinching). The artist emphasizes the agency but tender nature of the gesture, which assumes the picture of rosy cheeks. The close-up is shot on video 8, whose camcorder aesthetic is typical of the Nineteen Nineties and thus of the artist’s childhood.

The pixelated pores and skin tones captured within the digitised video hook up with the wall works crafted from clay. To Margnetti, the fabric properties of clay bear a kinship with human pores and skin. Whereas her self-portraits discover domesticity by way of household recollections, right here she turns her consideration to the architectural components of the house. She is especially within the shut relationship between structure and social norms: to what extent do spatial divisions inform values and pre-define stereotypical roles? How (and why) can we draw the road between what’s inside and what’s outdoors?

Gelosie (parete), engl. Jealousy (wall), was initially a part of an out of doors set up. Exhibited within the Vaud Alps, the clay panels fashioned the wall of a small cabin with a slanted roof. Working in sgraffito approach, Margnetti carved traces into the dried clay, initially inflexible and fence-like, which rapidly dissolve into undisciplined curls. They level to the permeability of boundaries—be it fences, partitions, or pores and skin. Beetles, seeds, and even a bat couple got here to inhabit the clay-walled shelter throughout its set up within the forest, as if to show its porosity.

The group of works titled … fa formicolare la stanza, engl. … makes the room tingle, extends Margnetti’s investigation into clay wall panels. Following a conventional building approach, the panels are made by layering clay with straw, coarse sand, after which tremendous sand. Right here and there, the artist’s personal hair emerges inside the clay mixtures. To Margnetti, structure, the physique, residence, household histories, and reminiscence are intently intertwined. The grid sample, additionally current in Homeplace Placeholder, turns into a signifier for a light recollection of her mom’s childhood residence.

On the opposite facet of the room, a blue glow lures us right into a nocturnal situation. 130 cicadas solid in bronze sit leisurely on the wall, typical beings of the outside, taunting us inside an indoor house. That is the serenade’s choir (Coro per serenata). Within the rise of local weather change, cicadas are shifting additional north, now filling the Ticino with their distinct calls. In response to this, Margnetti incorporates a sound factor: in case you stay nonetheless, you possibly can hear smooth clicking noises. It’s as soon as once more the dialog together with her mom, distilled into the delicate and unconscious clicking sounds we make whereas talking.

Margnetti’s piece Oasi (batticuore), engl. Oasis (heartbeat), marks the transition to the exhibition “New HEADS: JPP & Alexandra Sheherazade Salem.” Consisting of discovered illuminated letters from a freeway fuel station, Oasi (batticuore) is a meditation on border areas and idealised locations of longing, just like the Ticino. Emulating the artist’s heartbeat, the letters illuminate themes equivalent to residence, foreignness, origin, migration and household, which additionally play a job for the artists JPP and Alexandra Sheherazade Salem.

at Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen
till Might 12, 2024