/barbaragurrieri/group

“Society establishes the means of categorizing persons and the complement of attributes felt to be ordinary and natural for members of each of these categories.”
(Erving Goffman, Stigma)

The exploration of the social dynamics behind interpersonal relations in a specific context is what drives the work of /barbaragurrieri/group. The main focus for these two artists is Sicily, both a frontier and a land of transit, historically marked by the migration of Italians to America and, in recent decades, by migrants from North Africa or more distant lands making their way to Europe. Although their field of interest initially revolved around the domestic sphere, with highly ironic video animations that described the bizarre behavior of their countrymen (I miei vicini di casa, 2007-2008) or that deconstructed the function of everyday objects (Ironica Funzionalità dell’Oggetto, 2008), their investigations have more recently moved to the various linguistic communities that inhabit Sicily. The source of /barbaragurrieri/group’s work is most often direct observation, or images from the mass media, stripped of all narrative or performance-based emphasis.

Forgotten games (2009) comprises a series of animated films, each based on a montage of many drawings made using their characteristic straightforward technique, and which revive certain lost traditional group games. These are seen as a bond between members of a specific group, but also as a potential means of communicating with other groups. The rules governing inclusion, or condemning individuals to exclusion, are the subject of the series entitled Modello di linea (2009-2010), which begins by investigating frontier architecture, and then turns to the people most impacted, whose very destinies are determined by it. Without ever succumbing to rhetoric or oversimplification, these two Sicilian artists take on issues crucial to our era, focusing on an immediate reality while reading broader, probably universal, meanings into it.

ANNA DANERI