The Right to Disappear Contemporary Search for Anonymity through the Work of Lara Favaretto
Di Sabatino, Maria Vittoria
Di Sabatino, Maria Vittoria
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Abstract
Since 2009, Italian artist Lara Favaretto produced a series of works in different media under the name of Momentary Monument, emphasizing the ambiguity between the transcendent value of the artwork and its impermanence. In 2015, twenty monuments have been erected to historical figures, all of which chose private over public life, anonymity over celebrity, disappearance over presence. Each monument is meant to disintegrate through the action of time and weathering, until nothing is left of the work. Similarly, the purpose of much of Favaretto’s other work (e.g. Gummo IV; È così se m’interessa) is to be subjected to a frenetic, self-imposed physical dynamic, so as to ultimately be worn away. This thesis aims to examine the significance of materiality and endurance in some of Favaretto’s works, with regards to the idea of transient monumentality. I further explore the concept of disappearance by choice, both of artworks and of men, in Momentary Monument, and the way in which a contemporary desire for anonymity can be connected to the artist’s drive for entropy. The sources I used are both primary and secondary. As primary sources, the texts edited by Favaretto have been of fundamental importance: Ageing Process and Momentary Monument: The Swamp, the two monographic books edited by Lara Favaretto, and the critics’ and curators’ writings and notes on her works and exhibitions. Hal Foster’s “An Archival Impulse” holds a major role in understanding the artistic context of the age of uncertainty where Favaretto’s artworks are standing in. “An Archival Impulse” introduced me to the work of Tacita Dean and Thomas Hirschhorn, providing me with the means to identify the contemporary international context. Although never mentioned, Rosalind Krauss’s articles on the expanded field and minimalist sculpture in October Journal were key to trying to understand the roots of Favaretto’s art, but also how does it relate to context and what its spatial meaning is. About the last question, Petra Lange-Berndt’s “Materiality” will provide me with a set of case studies to parallel and interrelate with Favaretto’s case, as well as Charles Merewether “The Archive”.
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Thesis (B.A. in Art History, Minor in Entrepreneurship)--John Cabot University, Spring 2017.
Date
2017
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Lara Favaretto, 1973-, Italian art
Citation
Di Sabatino, Maria Vittoria. "The Right to Disappear Contemporary Search for Anonymity through the Work of Lara Favaretto". BA Thesis, John Cabot University, Rome, Italy. 2017.