Moira Ricci – Lookaftering

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“The meaning of “Lookaftering” as an act of caring, somehow evoked in absence,
contemplates the unusual correlation between the gaze and time in a continuity given
by the “-ing” suffix which extracts this word from the context of the vocabulary and
seems to keep flowing a past that by definition, does not exist anymore. We are dealing
with a made-up word and a condition where, from a potential gaze stuck in time,
derives a potential past that remains open and possible. Almost as the Greek
conception, who according to Roland Barthes, “entered into Death backward: what they
had before them was their past”.
From a similar perspective, where the atmosphere of “another time” corresponds to
that of an “altered” time, the exhibition of Moira Ricci brings to the Marubi Museum
two works related to her private life. The artist gets back to the images of her motherindirect
co-author of the stories they tell us- in a discrete protagonism, keeping an
almost obsessive and impossible dialogue with them.
From the language of photography to the video, the artist is pending between a time
that flows and turns back and another time which is definitely stuck. In each work,
contexts, environments and situations build a gallery of images where Moira has not
been present or where she assists through somebody else’s point of view. In the case of
the video, this is done by the recordings of the mother who used to follow her in dance
shows or competition. Here Moira gets back to her choreographies and to her
longstanding relationship to dancing. She shows us a story which has been
synchronized with the promiscuous and unrestrained optimism from one of the
soundtracks of the movie “Flashdance”. Far from the exhilaration of the accomplished
dream of the main character, here the artist’s aspiration is much more in a dialogue
with her nostalgia, which can be perceived even in some distorted sounds of the VHS
cassette which slightly interfere with the projection.
Next to these images we have the photographic series “20.12.53 - 10.08.04” where the
dialogue between the gazes is inverted. Now we find the artist who is facing the
dramatic event of the death of her mother, trying to chase and approach her in the only
place possible: the old family photographs where she literally gets inside. To become
part of them, she needs to perform, to take self-portraits, to find the right image and
place; to wear clothes and costumes of different periods of time; to analyse situations
and photo textures; to match up the proper lighting or the colour temperature and
sometimes even wait for the suitable season for shooting… The final stage is a series of
manipulated photographs where the artist stimulates as true and real, a curated illusion
of a presence poetically and intentionally disguised only by her melancholic vigilance
and isolation from a time which seems to keep on flowing in every photograph, but not
in her.”
Exhibition opening
Friday, February 23 at 6 PM
Conversation with the artist Moira Ricci and the curator Lek M.Gjeloshi
Saturday, February 24 at 11 AM
For press inquiries please contact Tea Çuni- email [email protected] -
tel: +355 22 400 500
This exhibition is supported by the Ministry of Culture of Albania and Istituto Italiano di Cultura in
Tirana.