Vernissage: April, Friday 7th at 06.00 p.m., at Loggia del Lionello in Udine, Italy (for the occasion, a small talk with the artists)
The installation is accesible in the historic downtown of Udine, in the circumscribed area between Piazza Venerio, Piazza Matteotti and Via Manin, from the 6th to the 9th of April, 2017 / from 05:00 p.m. to 09:00 p.m.
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 Udine city center, 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 city of Udine, just for a few days, will be possible to face with these stories, evokative of the sense of captivity happened through the constant militarization of life that here invested populations and the urban landscapes, transfiguring the city into a exterminate background.
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 the Municipality of Udine and the Associazione Modo
