June the 24th 2017 / The installation is accessible at MAAM – Museo dell’Altro e dell’Altrove (via Prenestina 913, 00155 Rome, Italy)
The installation Prisoners is born from the need to investigate the experience of captivity in a perceptive sense. Starting from the historical experience of the Great War, the artwork triggers a reflection on the idea of imprisonment, a constant and invariable implication in all the conflicts, impacting on the way in which we perceive the world.
Installed in the urban space of the MAAM Museum, the cubic structures open themselves to dynamism, showing the image of many people trapped inside them, that, desperate, seek freedom.
The random meeting with the artwork leads the passers-by to reflect on the encounter/clash paradox between their freedom and the exasperated condition of the prisoner, which is outside any time and any place (awakening a valuable, albeit uncomfortable, historical memory). A metaphor for all the imprisonments, not only those due to overt wars, but also the ones due to concealed conflicts.
Two languages underlie in the same work: fixity and perfection of the geometrical figure, combined with faulty and desperate gestures of those that try to achieve freedom. The artist Joshua Cesa describes a prison without expectations, reexaminating the relationship between prisoners and prison guards. Cubes are containers and contents, they are both cells and prisoners, each of them with a personal story. Walking through the liminal space on the MAAM, just for one days, will be possible to face with these stories: the artwork is in dialogue with the shapes of the place, hosting communities and refugee camps for the immigrants and asylum seekers, in which the artwork is filled strengthening its message of reflection on captivity as a troublesome legacy of the conflicts.
The installation appears to the unaware visitor in an unexpected way, provoking a primordial insight, evoking a strong and desperate recalls to human beings: our natural state is freedom.
In collaboration with MAAM
