valentina medda

My work explores, from both the point of view of the body as well as through clothing and feminine props, a possibility for women to escape the roles society casts on them, whether it is one of a wife or a victim.

Our body is our way to be in the world, our point of view on the space around us. As Merleau.Ponty stated “the here applied to my body does not refer to a determinate position in relation to other positions or to external coordinates, but the laying down of the first coordinates.”

It is through our physical experience that we get to know who we are and it is for this reason that the body has become the object of a normalizing social control passing through technologies and institutions,as Foucault noted it.

I do, however, believe that the body can set itself free, resisting this idea of control.

 Performing means for me resisting -to society,  habits, definitions and labels.

Also, performance is  for me a “Philosophy in Action”: the more immediate way to embody my thinking and  overcome the dichotomy between body and mind.

 Clothing is quite important in my work: I consider garments a social and psychical skin, where the exchange between the individual and the others are inscribed, and the social control, with its ethical and moral rules, are imposed. I agree with the idea of clothing as one of the way women have been handicapped together with laws and fears.

Environment also plays really important role for me –either in an urban, public sense or a private, domestic one; a theater where constrictions are played and produce

In my practice I work both with live performance and performance for the camera.