Dear Mr. President
Would you rather vote for a mixed salad or Mussolini? Alessio Mazzaro (Millenial, Italian) presents "Blueprints", Episode 11 of an exhibition series at aarduork.
“A bit louder for the people in the back!”
That must have been Alessio’s thought when putting a speaker on full volume into a boat in the Venetian lagoon. The sound recording was the artist himself reciting prompts about the ideal president: an ear to listen, a delinquent, a presidentress, a mixed salad.
After some time abroad, Alessio returned to Italy right before the national elections in 2022. Looking at the candidates, he came to a conclusion: They aren’t giving what they’re supposed to give. Instead of voting for the leftovers, he decided to create the perfect president.
The first step of his master plan was a workshop in February 2023. Everyone interested was invited to hop on. Together, they put into words their ideal president. The texts range from manifestos to poetry, dead-serious to meme references.
The outcome is documented on blueprint paper normally used in architecture to sketch and plan buildings: The blueprint is the ideal, the initial image that later versions are based on. It feels like treating the ideal president as a project, something to be constructed, something not real. Is there a point behind imagining?
Viral before the internet was a thing
As always in contemporary art, there is someone who has done it first. Alessio takes inspiration from the poem “I want a president” (1992) by Zoe Leonard (Baby Boomer, American). Zoe first published her text in a queer magazine, then it spread all over the States on posters and billboards. In the poem, she lists all the things she wants a president to be. But most of all, she wants someone who can relate. Someone who has gone through the mess of life and seen it all.
We’re all in the same boat
Part two of Alessio’s plan was bringing the prompts from the workshop into the Venetian Lagoon. He did two versions of this act, once on a small boat and once on public transport. In both interventions, he attached the speaker to the very front of the boat and let it blast the words collected in the workshop. He filmed both interventions, although he only used the footage from the first one. It would have been intriguing to see how people on public transport reacted to Alessio’s performance.
The ca. 10 min. long video with four loops shows a close-up of the speaker as it recites the words in the empty lagoon. Who is even listening? Does anybody care about what some guys think the perfect president would be like? Will those opinions ever change anything? Is there any power in political art? Or isn’t it just what Alessio’s video shows: screaming into an indifferent void? Is dedicating yourself to something beyond your control delulu or admirable?
Mussolini’s punching the air rn
Alessio made a second part of the exhibition. Together with family and friends, he designed and made objects from soft, grey fabrics. They are very much the opposite of the theme they embody: These soft cushions are fascist zeppelins. Wild switch, I know. The fabric zeppelin does not, unlike its blueprint, fly. It looks rather exhausted and makes me think of a seal laying on the sandy beach after a long day of snoozing. Alessio made a performance with this seal-cushion-zeppelin-pillow, carrying it through Venice and symbolically trying to make it fly.
Alessio attached three fabric prints to the largest zeppelin cushion. These prints depict real images of zeppelins from fascist Italy when humans wanted to conquer the world and even the sky. On every print, the artist embroidered a quote criticizing fascism. Alessio chose embroidery as it was historically reserved for women and therefore not recognized as a form of art. By embroidering the texts on these fascist photographs, he refuses to play into assigned gender roles as they were propagated by the fascists… But let’s be real, not even Jean-Claude Van Damme could pull off a mid-air split like that…
To quote a grand poet of our time, MrDeshawnRaw aka Supa Hot Fire, Alessio took the ball, he bounced it, he shot, he missed it. And, if we’re being honest, he didn’t twist it. The red thread of the exhibition got lost towards the introduction of the fascism theme and the feminist embroidery. It’s such a complex topic that it deserved to have a separate exhibition. At Blueprints, there is no real connection between current politics, fascism, and feminism: What was the role of women during the Fascist regime in Italy? How does the craze for technology relate to politics in Italy today? If there is no explanation, that’s just name-dropping for the sake of relevance.
Hang out with soft zeppelins and build your perfect presidential candidate at Blueprints, Episode 11 until August 31, 2023, at aarduork.
aarduork
Salizada Zorzi,
Castello 4931, Venezia VE
Open by appointment
info@aarduork.com
https://www.aarduork.com/
I hope you enjoyed this review (how about running for president?). Stay up to date by subscribing to this substack and send this review to a friend if you feel like it. Thank you so much!!!!!!
See you soon!
Jennifer
The Gen Z Art Critic