This project, thought of as “site specific“, was about the city of Milan in which I was born. In the early 70s the city was at the height of its industrial development. The factories were mostly located in the urban centre and this contributed to a significant degradation of the quality of the air that was seriously polluted. It was mostly due to a process of oil combustion which released “carbon particles or “soot” into the atmosphere, making the air unbreathable and blackened every building façade. Like many children at the time, I was affected by a disease related to this issue which became a “leitmotif” in my youth and a major diversion on the path of my personal and family life.
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Il mare sotto (The Sea Underneath) is a sound installation originating from a Milanese urban legend circulated among migrants arriving from Southern Italy during the postwar migration waves of the 1950s and 1960s. Through fragmented oral accounts of the city’s former navigable canal system and inland port, the historical memory of Milan’s connection to water gradually shifted into the belief that the sea existed beneath the city itself.
An iron grid embedded in the gallery floor connects to a pipe descending into the subsoil, suggesting a hidden circulation beneath the city. From within the structure, the sound of the sea rises and recedes again underground, as if briefly resurfacing through the architecture
Il mare sotto Sound installation, 2010 Iron, sound recording 32 × 32 × 50 cm
Vergin Mary/ neon light 2010 , cm 23 x 44
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