I tried to leave

"I tried to leave" - Postcards (2017)

installation site-specific

52 pieces, digital prints on cardboard, 10 x 15 cm each

in "101st Young Artists Group Exhibition", Venice (2017 - 2018)

"Ivan had moved to Venice.

Ivan loved Venice.

One day he locked himself in his room,

“I wanna try to leave this place”, he said.

No one has ever seen him leave the room since then.

A long time later an old box was found among his effects.

The box was full of never sent postcards".

Artist Statement

The work represents a collection of unsent postcards from trips that never happened.

The collection includes 52 pieces, one postcard per week for twelve months.

The installation is a playful revisitation of the birth and growth of a depression that leads the main character, Ivan, first to lock himself in his room and then to try to escape —from his room and his suffering— through journeys he can only undertake in his imagination.

But if very escape ends where it was born, and Ivan never left the room again, the postcards must travel: each person must take one with them and send it.

Only by sending the postcards Ivan's journey can be completed. And the depression seen as a negative, that is the elimination of oneself, finds its positive in the elimination of postcards.

Just as in mathematics developing a double negative generates a positive result, so in this work the two negatives (depression and the disappearance of the postcards) produce a positive: the journey of the postcards is the journey of a message of hope.

Only through the dissolution of the postcards Ivan's journey come to an end: it is necessary that the work is exhausted within the performative act until the last piece.

In this process, the sensitivity and interaction of the public are essential: the installation only makes sense if it disappears; only if people feel they want to help change an ending that isn't yet written.

Exhibition Views