Palazzo comunale, Corbetta (Milano)
Rachele Maistrello for her solo exhibition at the Sala delle Colonne / Hall of Columns of Corbetta (MI) has created a series of new artworks, brought together under the title “Once Were Warriors”. Where the movie, made in 1994, “Once Were Warriors” by Alan Duff, wanted to be a reflection on the attempt of an ethnic community, like that of the Maori New Zealanders, to coexist between their old traditions and a modern lifestyle without having to give up their roots or, worse, succumb; photographic works, videos and sounds presented in the exhibition by Maistrello focus on the figure and the visual world of Alessia, a young cosplayer from the Veneto province. Cosplay is a phenomenon, born in Japan imported later in Italy and in Europe, for which a person dresses up by wearing a mask derived from the world of fantasy and manga comics, often making them themselves, as in the case of Alessia. The works on display show two apparently very distant worlds, two identities: “Alessia” and “Cosplayer Alessia”. The first one, a young girl from the Italian province, that we all know how conservative and traditionalist it can be, the second much more free and pop. The artist has succeeded, using a fair amount of intelligence and irony in her works, to unify the two “Alessia” into one multi-faced and interesting personamondo. The fulcrum of the video shows three “Alessia” channels, a series of tableaux-vivants, in which the girl presents parts of her various fantasy-identities in an apparent immobility of space, time, and physics, only interrupted by a few elements: a cat, a horse, the passage of girls, etc ... incursions of one world into another. Videos are accompanied by a sound work in which Rachele asked Alessia to list her lexicon, the words closest to her, everyday. Hearing them, you realize how her two souls are totally and completely coexisting in the continuous alternation of names of people and common objects with comic names. If the presence of Alessia is so predominant in the videos and sounds exhibited, photos instead let her presence-absence emerge. If in the previous works it was the girl becoming manga, here the artist has decided to turn the cartoon characters into humans, magnifying their dimensions and positioning them in a real landscape such as a river, in particular the Piave, a witness of life, death and history. A continuous mutual past and the ever present real-unreal is the pinnacle of the work “Double Prism”, a photographic sculpture made with the technique of lenticular printing, in which images portraying Alessia and her friends dressed as cosplayers alternate with frame sections from fantasy video games. The show turns out to be not a simple video or photographic portrait of Alessia but the portrait of her world. A world of courage, imagination and freedom.
Once Were Warriors, inkjet prints, series
Once Were Warriors #3,#2, #1, inkjet print, 80cm x 90cm, 2015 ed. of 5
Alessia, 3 channel HD video, loop, 2015
video stills
Installation view
