Marzia Migliora. Pari o dispari (Even or odd)

From February 6 to 29, Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo and Comitato Torino 2006 are presenting the project Pari o dispari by Marzia Migliora, curated by Ilaria Bonacossa. The event is part of menoDUE, a series of cultural events that were launched last winter to mark, each February (the month in which the Olympic and Paralympic Games will take place) the approaching Olympics of Culture in 2006.
With a complex audio-video installation, Marzia Migliora reflects upon the themes of individuality/duality and uniqueness/otherness by observing pairs of twins. The young artist from Torino explores the complex relationships in a couple and reflects upon the likeness and analogies in thought, esthetic and physical traits, and on the tension between unity and conflict. But the artist goes beyond humans, putting couples of insects, fish, and butterflies in situations of forced confrontation-conflict, thus showing how relationships can radically change into situations of tension.
“The idea for the project came from a text, The Trilogy by Agota Kristof. Agota Kristof stages the crude story of two inseparable and interchangeable twins, apparently one in soul, who have been abandoned by a distraught mother. To fill the gap left by this bereavement and face their destiny, the two boys enact a survival strategy, a series of actions the author refers to as: exercises to toughen the body and spirit, exercises in blindness and deafness, exercises in fasting, exercises in cruelty.
Often times it hurts to look straight at reality, to take stock of it. To test the body in order to strengthen the mind, to deflect actions and thoughts, trying to pigeonhole them into a psychological strategy of resistance, is a method to endure pain.
The body is the limit that separates us from the outside, sometimes acting as an armor, other times as a mat dotted with pores that are open to feeling. It is a space that registers what happens, a fragile territory where sensations emerge, and the insurmountable boundary between the outside and the inside.
This works aims at providing food for thought about the identity of these couples, and of couples in general, taking couples of twins as symbols and as the object of analysis.
Symbiosis is something that also exists between couples of lovers, where it is difficult to draw the line between one and the other, and between their respective roles. Identification mechanisms set in, whereby the couple becomes a single self ”. (Marzia Migliora)