Short story of an exhibition that never existed although existed in another way and then perhaps will reexist. But above all, the story of a poignant (love) story.
Am I explaining myself, or perhaps not.
With Giuseppe, we share a passionate, tormented and above all eternal love for the muse of this installation, which is precisely the Lusitanian capital, Lisbon. A strange city, in a country with this particular historical-temporal duality, first glorious it was later relegated to the confines of the history books. From illustrious centre of the world until recently called ‘of the discoveries’ — and which today is fortunately called barbaric imperialism — to an almost non-existent historical agent, except as a meeting place for the various 007s between world wars and cold wars. During the 1970s, Portugal made a comeback, freeing itself from a rancid dictatorship and anachronistic colonial wars, but still remaining a very poor (and melancholic), but true, genuine, and authentic country. With a lot of effort it has tried to keep up with its neighbours, despite the long, uphill road to travel and the beating of the crisis in the early 2000s, to become today the place to be, sold (often cheaply) by tourist and real estate agencies, identified with slogans that always include sun, sea, surf, nice people and blondes.
And Lisbon, its magical capital, the city of spies and bright light, has always had various passages and landscapes of people, cultures, histories that have moulded its essence, somehow stealing parts of it. Like, for example, Giuseppe’s work-metaphor, composed of an audio and a wall of azulejos, the ceramic majolica tiles that adorn the city’s buildings, and that are in fact its symbol, often abandoned as a result of the crisis, poverty and countless sham property regulations. Azulejos are also the capital’s earliest existing souvenirs, sold by usually unsavoury characters — we cannot forget that until a few years ago Lisbon was known to be one of the nerve centres of the consumption and trade of heroin, crack, cocaine and basically anything else that could stupefy. These tiles, the ‘scales’ of the city’s ‘skin’, were peeled off during the night by the ladrões who, after cleaning them carefully — but not too carefully — aided by a special brush, sometimes similar to the one used by archaeologists, but often a simple toothbrush, rinsed them off and then put them to dry in the sun. Once the operation was over, the cleaned azulejos were sold to tourists on the street, preferably at fairs of stolen objects, such as the Feira da Ladra in Graça.
Today, azulejos sellers — the real ones — are very rare, just as melancholically abandoned or half-destroyed buildings are very rare, while tiles have multiplied, on remodelled, renovated buildings, now home to retrostyle luxury hotels, boho-chic houses and hipster McDonalds, or even for sale in souvenir shops, precariously concealing the Made in China sign. Lisbon today has a shiny new skin, but this epidermis is a fake, remade skin, a product of bubbles: speculative, real estate, start-ups. As the resigned voice in Giuseppe’s audio says, Lisbon from selling the skin is also selling the bones, so it inevitably leads one to wonder, what will be left to sell then?
But Giuseppe’s installation is in no way a criticism of the Portuguese capital, and probably not a sour comment on gentrification either. Let us take this work as a melancholic ode to the same melancholy that is so typical of this city, to a profound odi et amo for this old decadent Her that even if remade, faux-gleaming, underneath there is still the blinding light of early morning, the intoxicating smell of sardines and the meeting place of magic, people, souls, suspended time and cosmic alignments. Giuseppe therefore tries to bring these scales of ‘his’ Lisbon, allowing visitors to take home a piece of the city where precisely the artist, unlike today’s hordes of digital nomads, has always tried, because he felt like, to belong, to never be a tourist. The criticism in this case is perhaps to the speed of today’s world, which contrasts with those slow and muffled ways of living that are part of past, enchanting, magical stories. A contrast that becomes blatant in a city like Lisbon that still tries to adapt to this rhythm, but at the same time has been eaten up by it, and in the azulejo (the original ones) there is all the sublimated essence of this unhappy need to adapt, to chase the new by being eaten up, but at the same time somehow living with a visceral presence and attachment to the past.
The short story is that this work was actually intended to be presented, in a larger version, in a space in the Portuguese capital, but after various vicissitudes it was found more appropriate to present it initially here, today. To bring to Milan a souvenir of a place that we struggle to recognise today, that challenges us but at the same time we both know is Home — at least of the heart.
Orsola Vannocci Bonsi
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