Mrs. Hollow is coming to play

Mrs. Hollow is coming to play, 2022

"One day Mrs. Hollow got tired of having to adapt her face to every situation: to be happy, to be sad, to be bored, to get angry, or to console others. So she decided to make a face for herself. Finally, one face is ready for any emotion.

She took paper, glue, and brushes and built his new face.

Mrs. Hollow was so happy with her new face that she decided not to take it off again. Not even when she was home.

And when one day he got older, unfortunately, she no longer remembered how his real face once was.

It happens to many people as it does to her ".

In this work, my investigation of the relationship between identity and body continues.

I was inspired by the work of Brotherus who with "Portrait Series" pays homage to Baldessari's work on the subject of the artist's self-portrait while keeping the face hidden. Baldessari himself created a series of portraits of an artist with his face hidden by objects, arguing that the face could distract attention.

However, I inserted a face and I reconnected, in my research, to the work of Inge Morath "The Mask Series" with the artist Saul Steinberg, where through simple masks, designed by Steinberg, the accent is placed on how we wear social masks to adjust to expectations and mystify our true emotions.

So I imagined a small story taking a cue from Rodari's "Favole on the phone" by building a narrative like children's books where the protagonist does things: she dresses, reads, walks, leaves the house, goes into the woods (and here the work could go on).

In particular, I thought of Andy Pandy's stories that maybe I don't think are known in Italy, but when I was a child in the 70s he was very popular with us in Scotland.

The entry song of the show and the audiobooks said precisely "Andy Pandy is coming to play", which in my work has a double play value, but also to play a part, that is not to be yourself but to play another identity. Finally, "hollow" in English means "empty", which is a bit of the experience shared by those who feel the need to build an inauthentic identity to relate to themselves and to others.