INTERVIEW WITH GIULIA MAIORANO
by Vera Canevazzi and Caterina Frulloni
1) Where do you live, where have you lived and where would you like to live?
I live in Milan, the city where I was born. In 2017 I moved to Berlin, where, for several months, I was assistant to Patrick Tuttofuoco, whom I met at Naba in the role of professor.
I would like to continue to live here, in Milan, in particular in the western suburbs of the city, which remain a very green and quiet area. But I also like the idea of being able to spend more or less long periods of time in other European cities and beyond, New York for example, remains a bit of a dream...who knows!
2) What do you think is the most significant work of art of the last 20 years and why?
Cloud GateAnish Kapoor's work in Chicago's Millennium Park. A sculpture in polished steel, inspired by the shape of liquid mercury. Thanks to the reflective material with which it is made, it creates mirror effects that make it seem almost weightless, a luminous abstract space, a door to new dimensions. The perception of space and time is distorted, everything is deformed, from the architecture to the figures of passers-by, it also becomes difficult to understand where the sculpture ends and the sky begins. I believe that Cloud Gate is a significant work precisely because it succeeds in reflecting, both literally what surrounds it, but also because it induces in the viewer a spiritual reflection, a search for the self and the possible existing perspectives.
3) Which are in your opinion the three most interesting emerging artists at the moment?
Alice Ronchi, Federico Tosi and the duo Ornaghi and Prestinari.
4) What are your critical reference texts?
Certainly critical texts that deal with themes related to art and play such as Gadamer's "The actuality of beauty", or Schiller's "The aesthetic education of man" or even Bourriaud's "Relational Aesthetics".
Then I have a fairly large selection of contemporary art catalogues, which I have bought on my travels, mainly monographs of artists I love or collections of their writings.
5) Where and how do you work? Do you need certain conditions to enter the creative process?
I realize my works in the studio, which is also my home, in all 33 square meters, but I can maintain a certain order, I had to organize and exploit every single inch available!
The creative process needs first of all a mental space, like becoming a photographic paper that is impressed by what happens around it. Then, boredom is surely another determining engine, it is often when you have time to waste, that you are more receptive and it is easier to slip into imagination.
6) Do you work instinctively or do you plan your works in advance?
They are both necessary elements to do a good job, it is a dialogue between observation-intuition and a part more of reasoning and concreteness.
A work without either of these parts would be like a tower teetering, waiting to fall at any moment.
7) What role does the invisible play in your production?
The invisible is what you have under your nose every day but you don't notice because you are always distracted by something else or busy with something.
For me it has become like a challenge against the rhythms of today, to find a moment to get away from it all, to turn one's attention elsewhere, to become enchanted.
Upload Image...