The Other
2022
Shown at Liste Art Fair, Hall 1.1 Basel Fair
Anita Mucolli (* 1993) creates immersive spatial installations in which she reflects on possible future scenarios. Her spaces are reminiscent of film scenes or theatre backdrops that combine the familiar and the alienating at the same time. Those who enter the rooms become part of them themselves, and the boundaries between reality and fiction become blurred. By breaking down the barrier between subject and object, the artwork can be experienced. The artist often combines analog techniques and the latest technologies in her works, as in the installation The Bank Of Dreams' (2021), with which she convinced the jury of the Helvetia Art Prize 2021. Inspired by Jonathan Crary's book "24 /7: Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep", she deals with the question of how late capitalist systems try to penetrate even deeper into the biology of humans and their needs in a medially diverse and formally precise way. The jury, consisting of Francesca Benini (Curator MASI Lugano), Kathleen Bühler (Chief Curator Kunstmuseum Bern), Julian Denzler (Curator Museum zu Allerheiligen Schaffhausen), Joanna Kamm (Director LISTE Art Fair Basel), Andreas Karcher and Nathalie Loch (Fachstelle Kunst Helvetia) was impressed by the reflected and multi-layered implementation of the complex topic.
The Other at Liste Art Fair Basel
The work of Anita Mucolli has always been interested in space. Space not only understood as physical space but as having an anthropological dimension that ties our cultural concepts of time to the spaces we like, the spaces we imagine, and those spaces we inhabit through the many fantasies we produce through literature, cinema, comics, social media, etc. Space has many functions and a very important one is not only to be in but to collectively rehearse our past, our present, and our future. That’s the reason why the Ancient Greeks’ idea of a collective memory was based on the active production of spaces where rituals and narrative symbols could appear in front of the community. We could even say that every space has, therefore, a cinematic and storytelling potential. Cinematic in the sense that when we enter certain spaces we are able to collect all the memories of similar spaces and also to project upon the space the actions that took place there. When we enter a kitchen, for example, decorated in the manner of the past, the past appears in front of our eyes. The storytelling dimension refers to how spaces make us talk, make us collect memories, and share them with others. That is probably the reason why former works of Anita Mucolli were room replicas – spaces identical to spaces we know. In doing so, she stressed her interest in memory, in all the simple actions that a space amplifies but also in sculpture and the power to still create something different out of elements that look similar to those we encounter in our everyday life.
However, this new series of works goes beyond the reflection on space and adds a new thought on creatures that inhabit spaces radically different from the human spaces. If space demands an analytic approach, the creaturesque demands a practice that is oriented toward fantasy. It is only very recently, with the emergence of new technologies and cameras that we have learned to acknowledge that the monsters the poets and artists created for us were actually an exercise to get our senses accustomed to forms of life our eyes can never see. From micro-organisms to bacteria and viruses, to cells in all forms, to the inhabitants of the deep sea life provides us with forms we are not familiar with. And yet, this long learning to be with those creatures has also taught us to understand life better. This new family of creatures has arrived at her practice at exactly the moment where the work of Anita Mucolli is opening up to those dimensions of life that demand an imagination of the past and future of Earth that only art and artists can foresee. Think about them all as a family that she has been giving birth to over a certain period and she still needs to care for and foster. That explains the science-fictional swimming pool where they can all be, submerged in a liquid, that still nourishes them and makes them evolve. Evolve? Indeed. We may be only looking at embryos or prototypes or models of creatures that do not have yet a function and a place in the universe and therefore became temporary sculptures. True, sculpture is not only a language or a medium but a place where all those creatures gather till they become truly alive.
Text: Chus Martinez
