Visionarie, 2021

Visionarie is a series of eye-shaped hand-painted ceramic sculptures that focus on the male gaze and questions the nature of desire. The work questions who is looking at whom: it overturns the structure of power between the work of art and the audience, deprived of its own image control. By compelling visitors to bear the role of the “object” observed, the work forces the audience into the uncomfortable position of the victim of the unsolicited, imposed, and non-consensual gaze. In Italian, the male form of “visionarie” [visionary] often describes a brilliant person, while, in its female version, it more easily indicates a crazy, psychotic person subject to visions.
On the one hand, Visionarie embodies the centrality of the sense of sight; on the other, playing on a surreal and dreamlike level, it interrogates the mystery of vision and the structure of power behind it.