A reflection on our work by Maila Mangiapanello, who will join us tomorrow as a trainee, thanks to the University of Udine and the Erasmus programme (European Community Action Scheme for the Mobility of University Students)
I finished the reading of "Big Pieces of Time". I sincerely think that your work is very interesting. I see that people's participation is a real part of the work, the one's that determines the outcome of a sculpture. With the sculptures you want to express your idea as artists, but at the same time you are able to kindly attract the public and invite people to "live" the sculptures, activating "the feeling" for art. They can directly experiment the space and than make their reflections and, why not reach a personal opinion.
To me, this the hardest part of your work, because I usually don't believe in people's participation and, here where I live, I feel that is almost impossible to approach art to people and vice versa; not only because of art's language, but mostly because people has preconceptions on art. They just say "I don't understand art", but in most of the cases they're not even trying to. I am curious to see if the people in the Netherlands are different and how you can deal with people in your work!
Photo: Three former trainees and two partners of Observatorium in front of Ruhrmuseum at Zollverein
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