INTERVIEW TO CRISTINA CHERCHI BY J.B.(2010)

J.B: Cristina, we “break the ice” in a playful way, in line with your artistic research: chose three words to trace your  profile of  art.
C.C.:  toys/dimension/variation plus narration/history/sensation. When I create, I establish and I construct a paradoxical word-game, and I put it in relation with materials/objects, assembled and composed to carry out unreal and dreamy images.
Some other time, thanks to a literary citation, a proverb, a metaphor, I still re-elaborate the phrase and I often create contradictions while I originate an eccentric work, a play-acting.

J.B.: how do yoy organize, if you do it, your artistic process of creation? Have you got a rule? A momentary intuitions? Order o disorder: What is more important for you?
C.C.: disorder. I am looking for something or someone to have a suggestion, than I focus the course, the process comes and I can define my work. It must be a project. I pass through order and disorder, and vice versa, my way of life.

J.B.: Your works send back to childhood world, a sort of juvenile purity. The titles suggest it. I think to “They appear in the darkness of wood”, “Pinocchioitagliaocchio”, “Pinocchio and fulminate horses”.
C.C.: my works wants to be an implicit invitation to go beyond the appearances to get the thin gradations of narration, without to go off the audience by simplicity and immediacy of benefit. Sometimes, during the installation, I like to upset the sense and the meaning of the work. The childhood is fundamental. I recover toys. “They appear in the darkness of wood” represents a darkness wood where there are one small bed and two small chairs illuminated by the moon. The sweetness of small furnitures is contradicted by darkness of wood, suspended in time and in space. Is it a real place? Is it an illusion? “Pinocchioitagliaocchio” represents Pino (artist, player, actor), the branch of fir transforms it in Pinocchio (white, symbol of purity and honesty). The nose is a long branch full of leaves (the lies). The leaves look like a small Italy.
Italy, State of toys. Italy uses games to deceive. The eyes of Pinocchio are choke by stratification of paper. Pinocchio, representative of universal humanity, seems blind. Where are we going? Is it important? what do we lose when we grown-up? The time passes and runs out the parfume of childhood. We often forget the childhood, and when we grown-up we lose that playful sensation, that lightness who brings to be unique. I try to recover the delicate imagination of game. I use metaphors, sometimes I compare the imagination with real time.

J.B.: another word in your titles is eye. How much is important the sight for you? Do you think that every perception of world is beginning in the eye?
C.C.: the vision is fundamental. But every artist is unique. The imagination in art mustn’t be deprived of poetic sensations. If our eye was in need of sensorial knowledge it was aseptic.

J.B.: how is possible to have a place of freedom, freedom of expression in a world where everything is calculated? How are you free to make up one’s your mind?
C.C.: time is fundamental, but in my work it doesn’t predominate. It is fundamental for creative process, in metaphorical and pragmatical sense. My work is extremely slow and tiring. It is a kind of stratification of ideas.Than I re-elaborate and I re-arrange the ideas to concentrate myself in the execution of the project. The universal maxim to be in art system is “I want all immediately”. I prefer to be independent and slow to exploit time. This produces the contrary effect, it is against every inclination of style.

J.B.: “Let’s go to adrift” is your recent work. What is drift for you? How are we going? Shall we succeed to start moving on?
C.C.: drift is the constant removal of individual to real world.

J.B.: Do you want to mention your future projects?
C.C.: a collaboration with Tania Sofia Lorandi, disciple of Enrico Baj, exponent of Patafisica.

J.B.: do you feel included in the italian artistic survey?
C.C.: i don’t understand the italian artistic survey. Perhaps it is my problem.

J.B.: Who are the figures of your inspiration?
C.C.: people who make me laugh.

J.B.: have you got a maxim?
C.C.: eye for no-eye.