My sculptural work is based on a dialogue with materials.
It always starts with a love that I have for the aesthetic potentiality of the matter, the history that the material brings with him.
When studying the material gives me a vision, a form, then I start to work with it.
I could recognize myself in iron.
When I realized this, I started to give shapes to this matter.
That reflects my own feeling inside the world, human feeling.
So it can be rage, can be intimacy and pudore, you know, when you want to hide.
These sculptures don't represent anything.
They're not abstract, they're not figurative sculptures, but they have this attitude in the space.
So this is my studio in Rome.
It's in Centocelle.
It's the place where I work almost all the preparation of certain work.
And it's also the place where the work are stocked.
So you'll see... different families of work all together in the space.
I entered in Beaux-Arts de Paris, in the art school, in the academy, doing painting.
And I was already very worried about this putting object, adding matter.
This was already in my mind.
So I started at a certain point to draw sculptures.
I used to do these very big drawings in the studio with Caracol, drawing of sculpture, of installation of object in the space.
But they were in the paper.
And one day, my professor, Elsa Caio, she said, OK, basta, Lulu.
You need to do one sculpture.
Just try.
Do one.
Choose one sculpture and put it in the space.
And I did, and we made a show inside the school and it was open days.
Everybody was coming to see it public.
And I was controlling, like I was in the room and looking at the work of the other friends.
And one person entered in the space and he went straight to my sculpture and he started shaking it shaking very hardly, like this.
And I go there and they say what are you doing?
It's not, please stop.
And he just look at me.
I say this is made for that.
And I was like wow.
And after that I spoke so with Elsa.
I told her like this happened and she said now you discover the difference between a hand work, a two-dimensional work, and a sculpture in the space, the power that it can have because you're occupying a space that the public could occupy.
It's in the making that this energy continues to be present.
No, I don't have a memory of meeting a material and being like, wow.
No, I have this memory of starting doing forge just because I wanted to do a form and then discovering the material while working with it.
And this is something that always stays with me in the studio.
Just a drawing to be with me while I work with the details of the installation.
And usually what I do is just draw in a very free way, without measurement, the piece to have already the presence of the work inside the studio in a certain way.
So it doesn't have to be mathematically exactly the same, but it's just the presence.
If I make too much like scale, model or very specific drawing, i put all the energy in them and then this energy is not in this, in the final sculpture.
So i keep, i keep the doing for the final sketch.
When you are a sculptor, when you do sculpture, I think more than drawing or painting, but it's also an issue.
In sculpture, I think we think a lot about all the leftovers, all the material that comes from the act of doing and of adding objects in a world that is already collapsing under the matter.
Like stealing.
So there is always these two feelings inside the studio, inside the process of a need to do which is totally personal and also can be egoistic and have something to say about that.
And there are always these two facts.
That's also why I'm very interested in iron, because when I work with iron, there are no leftovers.
The iron, it's worth in itself.
I have this fixation since ever for the Bivio.
You know, when you have two streets and you have to choose.
And these are possibilities, no?
And you cannot come back.
The way we work with materials, which are ourselves, at the end, we are made of matter.
The shape changes the destiny, no?
The shape of an object will change the perception that we have of the material it is made of.
It's a research on the way we live on the planet, for me.
How we live with certain thematics as well, for example, death.
You can stop working like, I think, two months if somebody you love dies and you will never speak about it.
It's very hard to speak with a child about it.
It's all a problem around death, no?
It has a relation with materiality of being.
Because it's our materiality that makes us finish, no?
We stop existing. when our body stops working very simply and we change shape with time.
Let's go Kina!
So this feeling of responsibility and powerlessness is what drives all the way I work in the studio.
That we were saying before how much I produce, how much I don't produce, how much the leftovers of my work.
Every gesture reverberates very far off, often very far from the studio.
Now I'm gonna start the two rounded parts of the shape with these tubes in plastic.
This will not be there.
It's something I didn't do peace with this problem, because it's like a rebus that you cannot find a solution.
But it's not my work also.
But as a civilian, as a human being in the world, I can make choices.
And I think about it in every gesture I do at the studio and I hope this is visible also in the show.
And maybe feel less lonely.
You know, in this feeling, which is something that I think our generation is really aware of,
For example, for me, artisan or resistance.
To work in a human measure, human force, human performance, and not produce in a bulimic industrial way, is an act.
It's my response to this feeling.
To share, to take time in the relation with the materiality of the world is a resistance.
A resistance to this.
It's a resistance to this speed, to this way of consuming wasting.
But i think more about because i'm obsessed with it, but about the production now going going faster than the matter.
Going to not be truthful to the matter matter, we said it's the center of george.
Now if we speak about iron it's, it's the heart.
So it's like a for me it's like a betrayal we're doing as humans planet to go faster.
I think that having a relation with a sculpture, with a work of art, can be like a mirror with our own materiality.
How can it happen if we are already full of material?
It can happen only if I show you this material in a totally other way.
So iron has something very fragile, or a leaf has something very strong that will construct a fence.
It's not a magic trick.
It's real.
It's in the possibilities of this material.
It's a possibility.
It's another possibility. that is just hidden.
