I’m terrified of the blank sheet, the blank canvas, even on the Word page before I start writing. So for me, the colour of the unfinished is white, which is a non-colour.
It’s another story for collages. The paper is thin, so I have everything in a box with sheets, photos and pages cut out. I keep everything there, in a sort of case that I open now and then, from which I take out the images that I then try to compose.
If I say “unfinished” what is the first thing that comes to your mind?
I work a lot with images and I have a photographic memory, therefore a half-built structure immediately comes to mind, those skeletons that we see almost everywhere, in Italy and abroad, which are placed there, in the wrong context and place. Skeletons made of metal and concrete.
Unfinished what colour/shape is it?
I’m terrified of the blank sheet, the blank canvas, even in the Word page before I start writing. So for me, the colour of the unfinished is white, which is a non-colour. As a shape, I see it more like Das or clay. For the undecided, or for those who never manage to understand when work can be defined as finished, clay is the best material, because you can reshape it as many times as you want. It can take all the shapes of this world and can also return to its original form. A non-form that can change as often as you want.
What is your relationship with unfinished things?
I don’t like not finishing projects, but I learned, thanks to the collages I make, to be patient. I learned to wait, if I don’t find the shape I like right away, I keep it there, it settles down, maybe I find another photo that convinces me more, and I’ll try again.
Where do you keep your unfinished works?
Some of it, the more voluminous ones, such as large canvases or drawings, are in my parents’ attic. For collages, it’s another story. The paper is thin, so I have everything in a box with sheets, photos and pages cut out. I keep everything there, in a sort of case that I open now and then, from which I take out the images that I then try to compose.
An unfinished that you wish was finished?
The incomplete project that I would like to finish someday started quite spontaneously when I was 9 years old. It was a game, a pastime: I built a dollhouse with recycled materials, boxes, cork, and so on. Then from the shoeboxes, I moved on to metal ones, and finally, I had it made in wood. The interesting thing is that a large part of my life is inside this bulky and quite useless object because obviously, I have passed the age to play with it. But it contains gifts from friends, from relatives, things that I bought in different places… there are many memories in this object that I have never finished.