Marzia Migliora

Luigi Franco Arte Contemporanea, Turin
Through February 9

Marzia Migliora’s early photographs from the mid-’90s have a museum as their setting and are the departure point for her investigations into the subject of archiving and conservation. Particularly in the series “Il doppio interno”, a certain aspect emerged that has become a constant in her artistic practice: the notion that beneath the linearity of a given order, there lies a hidden ambiguity.

The title of her Turin solo show, The Flicker, also revealed the idea of duplicity. The term actually possesses two meanings: it may refer to the wavering or shimmering of light, while in a psychological sense it may express the concept of tremors or transient sensations. Here, the flickering was eminently the rapid rushing of images in Migliora’s two video projections. At the same time, the artist took into consideration certain spatial and sensory aspects, such as the tactility of the body, which is transferred from the physical environment to the emotional sphere.

The starting point for this dual exploration was the vandergraaf machine, a tool used in physics to examine various electrostatic phenomena, including the formation of energy fields within which bodies move in a state of suspension. This effect was apparent in the first video: a female face was positioned in the middle of the screen, framed by a mane of hair that slowly stood on end, until it was finally transformed into a halo of light around her visage. The scene closed with the gradual, inevitable fading of the image.

The “static” dimension was transformed into a dynamic experience in the second video, in which the artist herself was the protagonist, playing a game with a red apple hanging from the ceiling. The images, increasingly rapid and swirling, were shot from above. Bit by bit, the woman and the fruit lost their solidity and clarity until the apple—the object of desire—disappeared, projected beyond the screen while the artist continued to try and grab it. The images resulted from a process of action and reaction whose rhythm was so frenetic that it was impossible to keep them in clear focus.




Tiziana Conti
Translated by Amanda Coulson