Monica Zauli

Spatial Installation

The body we live in, 2010
Ink on paper

Portraits, 2010
Pencil, ink on paper

Notes for looking beyond, 2011
Photographs, ink

Horizontal Catalogue, 2011
Ink, pencil on paper, gouache

In making her Identity Room, Monica Zauli is stating her intent to use a space
as an expansion of her own identity, where on the walls she comes to terms
with reality, bringing her own inwardness into relation with the outside, with
acceptance of life, with change, with her own individual attitudes and with
the endless mutability of things.

The body we live in
“I have drawn thought on paper just like any part of the body, considering
the mind as something organic and thoughts as like plants in a greenhouse.”
The system of thoughts and the heart’s system of blood vessels are also both
like sea-fans, branching lichens, or organ pipes.
The geographical mapping is also a bringing together of body parts.

Portraits
In these portraits the identity of an individual is represented as it is, moving,
living, changing.
The sheet of thin paper, crossed by thousands of holes, opens up the face’s
bodily covering and reveals glimpses of the mind’s animated ongoings.
The changes of light on the worked surface bring us back to the dualism
between the visible and the invisible, between reality and appearance,
between solidity and evanescence, but also underscore the fragility of man.

Notes for looking beyond
Notes written on the photos in a book on the work of Francesca Woodman.
In the '70s Francesca Woodman represented herself through photographic
poses and poignant self-portraits.
They express her unease, her physicality, her desperate need to be heard, to
be seen.
Francesca decided to end her life in 1981, at the age of 23.
In this world of counter-impressions the image as it appears is not just the
real part of things, but more of a vibration where the shadowed part of the
story has to be taken into account.
The game, the beauty, become masks requiring a search for the hidden side.
What lies behind the illuminated façade of things?
What is behind a face?
There is always black and white, soft and hard, sweetness and pain.
This reading opens up, like a window, a fuzzy transition towards something
'other', towards something that remains to be determined.

Horizontal Catalogue
The “horizontal” catalogue is a strip of paper running all along the walls of
the room, recording, like a journal, thoughts, feelings, happiness and the
memory of happiness, side by side with scientific data on her own body,
taken from measurements and from clinical examinations.
It sets up a counterpoint between the physical and thought, in an attempt to
reunite body and mind.

See also:

• Music for Identity Room