DE-SIDERA
De-sidera is a reflection on the essence of the concept of gift, unilateral and with no constraints or expectations.
For this project I created 8 terracotta objects: cups or common objects depicting a clitoris. These objects are amulets.
Man has always performed gratuitous acts with the desire to evoke good spirits and favorable energies. These objects are inspired by the roman tradition of fascinus: phalluses made mostly of bronze but also of terracotta, which were hung on the entrance doors of houses or shops in order to protect those places. Phalluses exhibited, erect, powerful, typical of a male culture of fear in which it is the male sexual organ that has the power to protect and keep evil away.
The function of my amulets is apotropaic in the sense that they are made with the intent to evoke something; which is not oppression but which is called desire, pleasure, gift. The objects (which can easily pass from hand to hand) contain a stylized clitoris, the organ of female pleasure, an exceptional organ in the animal world whose sole purpose is to give women sexual pleasure. And also give pleasure to the man, to the extent that he approaches the woman without the will for domination. A generous organ that cannot be dominated.
The function of my amulets is apotropaic in the sense that they are made with the intent to evoke something; which is not oppression but which is called desire, pleasure, gift. The objects (which can easily pass from hand to hand) contain a stylized clitoris, the organ of female pleasure, an exceptional organ in the animal world whose sole purpose is to give women sexual pleasure. And also give pleasure to the man, to the extent that he approaches the woman without the will for domination. A generous organ that cannot be dominated.
In turn I donated these objects to 8 people, inviting each to keep them for a certain time and then in turn donate them to others. These passages have generated a community of desiring beings, precisely, a “community of desire”: people who do not hold onto the gift received but who let it go, following their own desire.
What the guardians have left is not an asset – the amulet – but its power to desire.
