The crisis of democracy and the consequent disappearance of western civilisation are the topics investigated by artist Gian Maria Tosatti for his latest installation in Odessa, in dialogue with the landscape of Lake Kuyalnyk.
The Odessa episode is part of Il mio cuore è vuoto come uno specchio (My heart is empty like a mirror), an articulated project that has been taking the artist around the world for some years now. The installation – which follows other artistic interventions in Catania, Riga and Cape Town – was developed following a long period spent in Ukraine, where Tosatto was able to collect and elaborate various suggestions, including the country's Soviet past and the Chernobyl nuclear disaster.
Tosatto's work camouflages itself in the territory, with the aim of narrating its complexity and imagining a scenario in which reality and prophecy mix. "In many towns or villages one can clearly perceive a faulty flow of time. Time seems to move slower than anywhere else or to go outside its mechanisms. Odessa seems like a piece of land adrift of time," says the artist.
The project curated by Kateryna Filyuk and Alessandra Troncone was realised together with The Blank Contemporary Art (Bergamo) and Izolyatsia Platform for Cultural Initiatives (Kiev), with the support of the Italian Council.