Mapping Identities - Cristiana de Marchi
Email note:
Concerning the workshop, I would like to develop the idea of the identity portrait into an identity mapping of frankfurt: ideally, people from different origin living in Frankfurt could attend the workshop where we would be cutting (in paper, forex... any light material) the shape of their countries and then build them up in a composition.
This would be a development of my "sustainability" sculptures (on my website under the geographies section) where I reflect on relational issues among existing geographic entities. For this project, I am interested in pushing it further and explore the terrain of actual social composition vs idealized/puristic projection and question the very idea of what does it mean to be a citizen of Frankfurt (as a metaphor and first experience, as I would love to expand this experience to many different communities).
Cristiana de Marchi is an Italian / Lebanese visual artist and author who lives and works in Beirut and Dubai. She received her MFA with honors in Archaeology from the University of Turin, after completing her Bachelor with Honours in Humanities at the same university.
Cristiana de Marchi's working method explores the social and political terrain of memory, of past and present places, of identity and disputed borders, and of utensils of contemporary nationality. Using textiles, embroidery, films, and performances, she initiates processes that draw attention to the currencies of power by exploring these very structures. By extracting signs and symbols, she questions the conditions of the systems that constitute them. She reveals the power structures contained in flags and their colours, passports, places, statistics, sociological models, words and letters. By focusing on often overlooked details, she points out how the seemingly harmless actions and details of everyday life are the essences of larger structuring systems.
Kindly supported by Kulturamt Frankfurt.