RUBEN MONTINI – WHERE I STAY WITH ME
2017-07-03I don’t want to call what I do “artistic practice” because it is truly connected to – is actually totally a part of – my life. My choice to have a home-studio, too, illustrates this continuity and continuous overlapping. The space where I live is also the space where I think and produce my work. Embroidery is the activity that, at the moment, occupies my days the most. It has historically been considered a hobby or a pastime for women when they relaxed after a day’s work outside the home, once they finished housework or while watching TV. However, it is increasingly becoming an actual job, like a cathartic instrument or an artistic methodology, independently of the gender of the person performing it. I, for example, count it among my daily activities ever since I started practicing it for my performance “E’ tutto qui. Dove sto con me” (2013). This “activity” became part of my everyday routine some years ago, first with an intent to quote Maria Lai and immediately afterwards, as a long performance where I tried to adopt that cliché connected to the domestic figure of the woman as my own. I brought what for many was considered a hobby to extremes, to such exasperated extremes that it fully became part of my days. Initially, I embroidered directly on Sardinian tapestry projects: instead of using them as outlines, I embroidered directly on the paper sketches that, for others, indicate the road to follow. For me they became – and sometimes still do – the road itself.
Ruben Montini
Exhibition runs through to July 29th, 2017
Prometeogallery di Ida Pisani
Via Giovanni Ventura, 6
20134 Milan
Italy
