Rita Casdia

While seemingly light and playful, the fantasy world can at times lead to dark and hidden places, or even dig deep into the depths of our soul, laying bare truths we dare not tell. Playful subterfuge is the language Rita Casdia has chosen to narrate her stories, which, like some fables, do not always have happy endings. But this initial illusion makes it possible to travel over rough and rugged roads where one encounters plastiline figures with bug eyes and multicolored hair, naïve random protagonists of earth-shattering events that they cannot begin to explain. These little dolls seem constantly bewildered; they question and wonder without ever finding the least explanation. They only know how to inexorably follow the path they are on, come what may, completely oblivious. Rita Casdia’s figures, whether molded or pencil-drawn, form lines that enmesh and then melt away to the sounds of mysterious rhythms.

Through these quiet, yet vaguely disturbing little figures, one can finally own up to one’s fears: of abandonment, of confrontation, of not being able to live up to society’s standards, of failing to connect with other people.

The dialogues are complex: these little characters do not shrink from revealing their darkest secrets openly and without the slightest reserve, exposing devastating feelings, improper or inappropriate passions... in other words, the entire repertory of complicated human and social relations, playing on the inadequacies and the constant loss of one’s bearings.

In the video animations – the culmination of a long and complex labor of creating the figurines and then animating them by virtue of thousands of photographic shots – the plastiline dolls are often confronted with harsh reality as they wind their way through real cities, buildings and squares, infinitely accentuating their sense of alienation and discomfort, while underscoring the fragility of their existence.

Paola Nicita