Saluti & Baci - Graphic Days
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T.I.G.R.O.
T.I.G.R.O. (Things I Get Rid Of) is an ongoing project about decluttering and the surplus of possessions we accumulate over time.
ProcessEvery object I no longer need is drawn before it is thrown away, sold or handed down. The drawing is a small ritual: a way of paying homage to the object and capturing something of it before letting it go.
The project grew out of observing how differently the members of my family, myself included, relate to things. Unlike a photograph, a drawing filters and interprets. It fixes an ideal view of the object, as it is perceived and remembered, not as it actually is.
This raises several questions. Does the representation of an object carry the same emotional charge as the object itself? Does the drawing become an object in its own right? Will this new object, thin, flat and made of paper, occupy the same emotional space in our minds as the real one?
The project also reflects on the compulsion to photograph what we own and post it on social media as a status symbol, and on the desire to accumulate, with its effects on our lives and on the environment.RepresentationThe investigation touches on the older and broader question of objectivity in drawing and still life.
What is the value of representation here? More or less detail, colour or black and white, a realistic drawing or an almost abstract patch of colour: the choice depends on which aspect of the object I want to bring out and remember. Is it the colour? The shape? The texture? And how should I render softness or hardness, the smoothness of a surface, or the warmth I felt wearing it?
Thanks to: Francesca Pistone, Pietro OrtolevaBibliography
- George Ritzer, La religione dei consumi, Il Mulino, Bologna 2012
- John Maeda, Le leggi della semplicità, Bruno Mondadori, Milano 2006
- Fumio Sasaki, Goodbye, Things: The New Japanese Minimalism, W. W. Norton & Company, 2017
- Peter Walsh, Let It Go, Random House, 2019
- Mark Doty, Still Life with Oysters and Lemon: On Objects and Intimacy, Beacon Press, 2001
- Daniel Kahneman, Jack L. Knetsch, Richard H. Thaler, "Experimental Tests of the Endowment Effect and the Coase Theorem", Journal of Political Economy, 98 (6), 1990, pp. 1325–1348
- Daniel Kahneman, Jack L. Knetsch, Richard H. Thaler, "Anomalies: The Endowment Effect, Loss Aversion, and Status Quo Bias", The Journal of Economic Perspectives, 5 (1), 1991, pp. 193–206
- Lorraine Daston, "Epistemic Images", in Alina Payne (ed.), Vision and Its Instruments: Art, Science, and Technology in Early Modern Europe, The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2015, pp. 13–35
- Dagmar Eichberger, "Naturalia and artefacta: Dürer's nature drawings and early collecting", in Dagmar Eichberger and Charles Zika (eds.), Dürer and His Culture, Cambridge University Press, 1998
- Peter Parshall, "Imago contrafacta: Images and Facts in the Northern Renaissance", Art History, 16 (4), December 1993, pp. 554–579
- The True Cost, directed by Andrew Morgan
- Tidying Up with Marie Kondo
- The Minimalists: Less Is Now, directed by Matt D'Avella