ARCHE-TYPES

DESIGN PROCESS

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ARCHE-TYPES, 2015 — Vatican Pavilion, 56th Venice Biennale. ©MonikaBravo

This is a conversation I had with the curator from the Pavilion in the Contemporary Museum of the Vatican, Micol Forti. Immediately after, she approached me to give me the commission for the Biennale. These are some excerpts.

MICOL

Regarding the second proposal, ZAUM_BEYOND SENSE, I have different concerns. I fully understand and appreciate the dialogue that you wanted to be established between the words, so important in our project, and the geometry of color that has its roots in the research of Malevich, but just this historical reference I feel it too intrusive. Then you would lose, in my opinion, the centrality of the word, that in your proposal aim to have a leading role.

MONIKA

Malevich is a conceptual reference, not a formal one. I would use images of landscapes that move geometrically combined with colorful backgrounds, implying the beginning of abstraction in the history of painting. The words would have a significant role in the whole, for it is about the words that I am talking about, about the perspective of how these words have been and are still perceived. My position is in the parallel yet the ambiguity of the absolute word.

MONIKA

The idea of GOD, how to represent it? I used color walls, like Malevich did, as a representation of the intangible — colors as a surface needed to interpret the word. The landscapes underneath I want them to move, to become deconstructed, like when one thinks of GOD and breaks the mind trying to grasp it. Landscape is the metaphor for the human mind.

MICOL

I wonder if it is possible to replace in some way segments with words, using the same images and the same software that drives the geometric wires. I refer to words linked to the beginning, to the action, to the word itself, to the parables or even short pieces of text.

MONIKA

I have to find a way to make the diagrams work in benefit of the text. For me the language should be in abstract form. That is why I thought Kruchenykh's idea of Zaum as a reference was great — decoding what we think is already the word of god, rearranging its meaning. That is where I stand, where my voice is as an artist. I want to pose that question in the piece.

MONIKA

I would refine the idea better, and knowing my work process, I know I will. I would start to edit down until the poetry emerges — only until what is absolutely necessary becomes the piece.

Micol Forti, Curator, Vatican Pavilion, Venice Biennale — November 30, 2014