From the Suburbs, Florence (2023)

5 T-shirts (XL, L, M, S, XS) and 5 posters (42 × 59,4 cm) with reproductions of images and audio work (via QR code) for San'azione art project by ilPrisma in collaboration with Angelika Stepken, public space, Le Piagge, Florence, Italy

Voice: Marion Sherwood, translation: Katarina Atkinson, Annamaria Bianchi

Artist Haure Madjid, fellow at Villa Romana in Florence, Italy, invited me to an open studio event in the fall of 2022. I met the painter Sebastiano Benegiamo in Le Piagge, a suburb of Florence built in the 1980s, where he initiated the project IlPrisma together with his friend Emiliano Anselmo. In spring 2023, I participated in the group exhibition San’azione by IlPrisma in collaboration with curator Angelika Stepken.

On posters and T-shirts visitors could see images of different high-rise buildings and scan a QR code to hear an audio work: A young voice speaks a manifesto-like text and asks visitors to reconsider the past and change the present for a different future.

My contribution was part of the collaborative project Parrots and Swans, which I initiated in 2020 in Ratingen-West, near Düsseldorf, Germany. Ratingen-West is a typical European large housing estate. I grew up there in the 1970s and 1980s. Together with artist friends, I came back and we reflected on living together.

Le Piagge is also a typical European large housing estate. It looks familiar to me. I feel the clash between architectural utopias and living conditions today. I feel the vulnerability and the possibilities of micro changes.

On Sunday 7 May 2023, I invited visitors to take a walk to see the posters, to listen to a young voice and to talk about our expectations for living together in the future. They were invited to wear one of the T-shirts to become an active part of the art work.