Installation – March 2021.
Wood, fibreglass, rope, grappling hook, coffee powder, led light, cuttlefish bones, metallic hook.
Dimensions: H125.5cm x W128cm x D158cm
A brief overview of my Artwork.
Detachment from my hometown Naples not only has helped me to understand who I truly am as an individual but also analysed the true essence of the relationship I have with the city.
My cultural displacement is a form of self-reflection which gives a better understanding of my research.
The artwork expresses my search for a true home in relation to feeling dislocated from my birthplace.
I wanted to throw, metaphorically, an anchor over my hometown, Naples, to reach a different destination, destiny, being more open-minded while I am still chained, tied to my cultural heritage.
My fixed Italian mindset, ideas and values were firmly anchored in my mind, and this led in the past, to automatic decisions and behaviours.
Moving abroad has altered my perception, it made me reconsider my personal and cultural values.
Neapolitans are superstitious, they believe in luck, fate… they seem to endlessly wait for something to happen.
Neapolitans don’t like to question things; they don’t like change and I always find that I am alone and isolated in my willingness to embrace the new.
Naples on the surface seems to never change and this is in strong contrast with its alterable, “tumultuous underground”.
I consider the territorial morphology of my hometown to be an effective metaphor in which I reflect my displacement.
The ground changed position through history because my city lies on many active volcanoes.
The collective imaginary of a future catastrophic eruption, projects this sense of instability of the land.
Naples is also one of the clearest examples of cities where history can be traced through its “layers”.
The Greek and Roman Neapolis and the present-day city are not separated by millennia but metres of soil under the ground.
In my installation I placed a LED light below a fibreglass sheet which forces the light to bounce back to the floor illuminating part of it.
I wanted to create the illusion of space, a layer that reveals itself beyond mere visual perception, revealing a fracture, a collision point between past and present, change and tradition.
Visual Glossary.
• The grappling hook/anchor.
The grappling hook is a great metaphor I also reference to myself.
It can be a negative thing in that it is something that keeps me from moving forward.
I threw my anchor beyond what was holding me back.
To dream of a grappling hook also represents the security of choices or goals. You want to ensure or be confident about something before you proceed with it. You may want to guarantee an outcome before pursuing it.
• Rope.
Often rope dreams will indicate personal aspirations, how you go about achieving goals, or simple reminders to settle down in your life.
• The cuttlefish bone.
The cuttlefish bone on top of the wooden post is a representation of Naples which has forgotten its glorious past and has been abandoned to its destiny like a bone left, forgotten, brought from the sea waves to the shore. The cuttlefish bone is elevated from the ground, and it assumes religious connotation symbolising how Neapolitans warship an empty shell (Naples) which has been deprived of its real essence/value.
The modern Naples is often depicted as the city of death and it seems that Neapolitans are unaware of their glorious past.
• Coffee.
Coffee represents the new cultural awakening.
I used coffee powder to indicate how Neapolitans hold back from moving forward.
If there is something in your life that keeps rearing its ugly head and appears as a black spot (coffee powder) in your life that keeps you from moving forward, it’s time to let the rope go into the sea with the anchor and move on.
Salvatore Capuano 