Self-portrait


Milan, June 1999. I sleep. I choose this parallel life in order to enter into the reality of things—but in a different and total way, because in those hours I oscillate between the past, the present, and the imagination. Maybe reality itself is only imagination and what I dream is the truth. If life is in our heads and in our thoughts, then it follows that we live most authentically in our dreams. I am fascinated by the hermetism of the body, by its ability to insulate itself from the outside world while it experiences emotions through images, which at times end up being nearly indistinguishable from one another. I love to sleep because it is in moments of sleep that important encounters take place. My rational mind lowers its defenses; in the midst of fluctuating emotions I enter into the totality of life, into a present that is the synthesis of my past, liberated at last in oneiric images.

Turin, October 9, 1999 Today I exhibited my intimacy to the public. I showed myself, nude under a white sheet while sleeping on a pillow I had made with a silicone ear attached to it. I managed to completely separate myself from everything that was happening and give the spectators a two-hour-long vision of the most private part of my life—the part where I feel most vulnerable. I have been analyzing the world of sleep for two years now, and today I felt ready to show myself to others and to juxtapose two opposing realities: mine—intimate, silent—and the chaotic and confusing reality of a gallery-opening crowd…


The full text is published in "tema celeste" No. 85, May-June 2001.




Luisa Rabbia