Giulia Piscitelli

Critical text

Giulia Piscitelli (b. 1965, Napoli) began working with geographical maps about ten years ago. In an old atlas, she found this definition which has profoundly influenced her work: “Other activities”. This header was used to indicate weapons, cowhide, shipyards and the slave trade. Slavery was thus treated on a par with any other type of commerce, with slaves seen as raw materials to be listed in relation to certain geographical areas. The artist began to reproduce the sign utilized to mark the presence of slaves as a symbol of the most monstrous part of the human race, the grim meanness that exists inside all of us. The slave, shown as a small man with a hunched back, bent by labour and abuse, became a continuing source of reflections. With disorienting force, we see it in the form of notes on musical scores, or in the middle of colouring books for children. Play and music, creative activities that raise human beings above the level of wild beasts, clash with the figure of the slave, which makes the human race plummet to the lowest rung of the evolutionary ladder.

Text by Irina Zucca Alessandrelli