#Blackfish series
#Blackfish series – African masks (2020)
Wood, stucco, acrylics paints, metallic pigments, enamels, glass and epoxy resin, dim. 40 x 60 x 12 cm.
The fish of the #Blackfish series, boxed up like products on sale at a food market where the available goods are both abundant and anonymous, without clear origin, are still masks, the hidden identities of people made into something other than themselves.
As for the two preceding series, the starting point of this one is still migration, Africa and its identities.
In this case, however, identities, themselves presented like goods that can be bought and sold, focus in on the theme of commodification, of the inversion of meaning ascribed to seeking one’s place in the world.
And so, the masks, and the identities they imply, become animals with many eyes, fish that can be bought, consumed, and then bought again.
Patrizia Gelli
Art Historian