She Is an Italian Diva Fighting Against Time
for the exhibition The One That Sucks The Dust, Fondazione Antonio Ratti, Lake Como 2023
Influenced by shared readings on time as matter, I decided to paint the phrase ”She is an Italian Diva Fighting Against Time” onto a leopard-print chiffon fabric and wear it as a shawl to our first dinner together at the Fondazione Antonio Ratti. That evening, Mina’s song Amante Amore took center stage and, mindful of both the singer’s geographical proximity and the mythification of the icon, I conceived a sound installation connecting one of the villa’s buildings with the adjacent chapel and Lake Como.
From the villa’s window, an audio recording of Lorenzo Silvestri and me shouting “Mina” is projected towards the lake as an invocatory gesture, leading into the audio broadcast from the loudspeakers installed in the chapel below. Through them, visitors hear the singer introducing her own song during a 1977 radio program. Like a ritualized call, worship shouts give way to the diva’s voice and her song in a loop that reappears every thirty minutes, like an apparition. Those passing nearby, together with the chapel’s angels, became witnesses to an invocation of Mina, with her music and Lake Como as the backdrop to a shared fascination with a timeless diva.
