LUCREZIA DE FAZIO
interview
Text: Willa Meredith
Photography: Caroline Lucia Smagagz & courtesy of the artist
MEXICO CITY / February 2024
The Mexico City-based Italian artist Lucrezia de Fazio tells me how the city, her dreams, and her primary medium - her body - have shaped a profound evolution in her work’s core themes: femininity, intimacy, desire, and now motherhood. This art week in Mexico, Lucrezia will present the second of three acts in her latest work, Madres, Monstruous, y Maquinas, a long-term project that is synchronistically linked with her first pregnancy.
WILLA MEREDITH — Let’s begin with the roots of your practice, where did you go to school?
LUCREZIA DE FAZIO — I moved to London from Rome when I was seventeen to do my foundation year at Central Saint Martins. After that first year I moved back to Italy to do my BA in sculpture at the Fine Arts Academy, where I learned many techniques in the old school way, like anatomy and drawing for eight hours straight. I then went back to Saint Martins to do my masters in photography and philosophy. These were the two most important years for my career in the sense that my practice developed through trying many different types of media. I came from an academic background in Italy, then brought that to London where I explored video mapping, installation, and video performance. These two worlds combined into what my practice is now.
What initially drew you to performance and using your body as your medium? — At Saint Martins, we had no time. There was a lot of pressure, a lot of anxiety. This is why I also started to play with video, because I could have the effects and results quicker and in a more effective way than going to the lab. It's a different process, especially with performance because you're exposing your body. It's very powerful, and it's more direct. It's a lot of things. I say sometimes when I go to see other performances, just the presence of the body means a lot. You don't need to add a lot.
So it was a pragmatic choice then, but you’ve stayed with the medium — The exploration of the body as a female artist was and has always been the focus of my practice. It was a lot more experimental at college. Since then I’ve gone back to the roots, going back to drawing and writing, and from there I went back to performance again. The figure is still central. It will always be, it's the closest thing that I am, the closest thing that I have to explore. It's a very mysterious medium.
_JPG.jpg)
.jpg)
I'm interested in how you represent the female body in fragments. Lips, mouths, tongues, breasts, and nipples that are then multiplied. — This started in my mind at Saint Martins. I had a seminar with our philosophy teacher, who taught Deleuze’s texts, and I remember the concept of Body Without Organs. This stayed very clear in my mind. I liked the idea of cutting the body in the way that is desexualized. And these are mostly sexual parts: tongues, nipples, hair. I started with the nipples which were the most obvious. The tongue as well. You can find a lot of meaning in the symbol of the tongue, and the hair too. I’m in the hair moment right now. I use them as symbols. But I also really like the anatomic part, in the sense that they are true to their referent because I cast them from actual bodies.
So they're not interpretations but bridges between the literal anatomy and its symbolism? — Exactly, they are exactly what they are, with all the pores, and all the details taken directly from the body. On the nipples you can sometimes see the little hair. You can see they're from different bodies. With an anatomic part, you can separate and analyze the literal form from what they're used for and what they symbolize.
For me, they suggest a disembodied, maybe divine feminine presence. The installation views feel almost like shrines. — Now that you mention the shrines, I see it. I never thought about that before. I like when others have a different reading of my work. I'm not a Catholic, but I come from one of the most Catholic cities in the world. And we have something called ex voto, which are like little sculptures of body parts. Each saint is the protector of some body part, for example, Saint Lucia is the protector of the eyes. So if someone is sick in your family, you bring this little ex voto, this sculpture of the eyes. So I like to see these works also as ex votos. There's a holiness to how they are installed in the gallery or art space, which is typically a sterile white space.
I'm also curious about the tongue symbolism — The whole project came from a dream that I had, where I was cutting the tongues of people I knew. I remember sitting at the dining table with my friends, and they were not talking, and I knew it was because I had cut their tongues. The title of the work is Cosas no Dichas, unsaid things. I collected a lot of symbolic words that you can combine, like Mom, Christ, Believe. Big words. The artworks come from different research so at the end you can have different readings. But for this it was the meaning and story behind the word gossip. The word gossip comes from the handmaids who were present at the childbirth in the fourteenth and fifteenth century, which was the same time as the witch hunts. It then evolved to become a bad word connected to witchcraft.
As in gossips spreading rumors about the witch in town? — Yeah, or being gossipy. So I like this anecdote.
I like it too. Your often explore relations between women and the female collective, like in HYMN, for example, which also felt witchy to me. What’s the story behind that? — The project began during lockdown when I was in Mexico City with Lexi Sun, a fellow Chinese artist and friend I met at Saint Martins who was living in Berlin at that time. We started sharing our personal experiences of that time with each other. For me, it was going back to live with my mother after ten years, and she was experiencing living with her girlfriend for the first time. So we collected lots of little actions that we observed from these experiences, then we started writing the performance together. Each movement was symbolic of a relationship that we had with a female other, which could be a mother, a lover, the feminine side of your brother, of yourself or of your father. They were very simple actions. One of them was called The Lover's Discourse, which is performed by a cellist. Behind her there is another performer connected to her with two hand pieces. The cellist was playing her music, and she was being hugged by the other behind her in this very romantic way. But she wasn't able to perform what she actually would because she was constrained by the movement. The idea was about a relationship where you feel safe, you feel loved, but at the same time you can't feel or be entirely yourself. Little things, very symbolic.
How did the performance go last year in Mexico? — We showed it for the first and only time in a real way here in Mexico City at the Italian Institute. It was crazy. Thirteen performers in a huge fifteenth century nuns cloister. Everything was red, it was a bit spooky in a way. Some feedback that I had was from a friend who said they had a feeling of danger the entire time. And I liked that because I didn't think about it when I was writing it.
I felt that too - how do you find women respond to your work? — What I remember, especially during HYMN, was women and female friends of mine in the audience crying, thinking about their moms. It was cathartic. Women were empowered by the performance, and connected to that sweet side of childhood. Male audiences were more shocked. They also didn't expect that from me. A lot of people were used to seeing my paintings, my other work, and they were shocked that there was a sense of violence in the performance. I will say women saw the tender part, and male audience saw the aggression and the violence and the danger.
Can you tell me more about this other side of your work? — I use drawing and painting, mainly with watercolors, as an automatic and impulsive practice like writing a journal. My works on paper are the most intimate and private ones to me. I draw by memory bodily shapes, portraits, flowers. it doesn’t really matter who and what they are or represent. These works come out as a subconscious response to the more “aggressive” side of my work but coming from the same place. Through those images I explore memories and encounters, remembering the moment they happened and try to recreate them.
For me, your work represents a duality, where there is the tender and sensuous side to femininity, along with its darker aspect: being subject to objectification and violence. — My main subjects are objectification, domestic labor, and motherhood. These are big topics that are forever connected to the female figure in society and in the family. This is what I want to explore in my art. And it’s also about anger. Art is the way for me to express what I feel and what I want to be seen. With performance, it's very direct. There's not a lot of interpretation. You see two girls drowning themselves, it's a strong image, you can feel grief. It's all there.
How has living in Mexico changed your work? — I want to make it clear that my discourse comes from privilege. When people ask “how's Mexico City,” it's very protected for me. Gentrification came big and strong, but at the same time you can just switch on the TV to the news and you can feel it: Femicide is a huge thing here, it's happening. What I see here that makes me furious is that it happens to most girls. Violence is part of their upbringing. There are huge manifestations for Women's Day in Mexico, and you can see the anger and the reaction. The good thing is that there is a reaction. Still, it’s not a safe place. It’s coming from a society that is very macho. I also come from a country that is also strictly macho, but in not such an obvious way, which can be even more dangerous.
How did you end up here? — I came for the first time in 2017 with a couple of friends who wanted to see the architecture. I came with no expectations. It felt very familiar, I felt very welcome. It’s not similar to Italy, but there was not a huge culture shock in terms of the people. They are very warm, they love their food, they love their culture, exactly like we do in Italy. Coming from London where the arts scene is very big and very institutional and very closed, here everything is much more free, and more open. From that trip I applied for a residency to come back and explore more. I stayed for three months during Zona Maco, and I found out what art week was. Since then, I’ve shown in and come back for every art week, until I stayed for good, two years ago.
So, you’re presenting the second act of Madres, Monstruos y Maquinas this art week. — In April 2023, I confirmed my solo show at Galeria N.A.S.A.L in la Roma. I was thinking, okay, the show is in February of next year, what could possibly happen between then and now? And then I got pregnant. And my due date is in the same week as the show. I will also have a piece at Salon Acme, and another at the Italian Institute. As it happens, I was researching the texts that informed this project just before I found out I was pregnant. The entire project is closely connected to my pregnancy.
Wow. That’s incredibly synchronistic, and very beautiful. What was the text? — So crazy. I was already reading essays by Rosi Braidotti, about domestic labor and the role of women in society and in the family circle. And then I read her essay, Mothers, Monsters, and Machines, from which I took the project’s name. It’s about how the female body, specifically the mother’s body, has been seen since ancient Greek times as something monstrous, because of how it changes shape very rapidly during pregnancy. There’s also the mechanical aspect of reproduction, and how nowadays, we can reproduce without the act of sex, and how reproduction can be manipulated in a lab. And on the other hand, how you can have sex without reproduction. I started working on this project and divided it into three acts, like the three trimesters of the pregnancy. I started getting into these ideas while I was experiencing it in a personal way.
What was the first act? — The first act happened in November, it was called Cantos. It was a simpler performance, with just six performers. They were playing a lullaby, composing the music live. The chorus was singing, then the instrumental was a xylophone. Lullabies reflect both this tender and creepy side of motherhood. It's something that makes your baby sleep out of both love and desperation. People are like, ‘aww you're doing a lullaby.’ And I'm like, ‘yeah - but wait for it!’ I read something by Federico Garcìa Lorca, one of my favorite poets. He surveyed all the lullabies in Spain, and he discovered how creepy the lyrics are, like, ‘please, go to sleep, so that the bad person will come and eat you alive.’
Fairy tales originated as very disturbing stories. — You subject a completely innocent individual to that, a baby who has no intellectual apprehension of what's scary or what's loving. I believe it comes from desperation when the mother is not sleeping. I found it very interesting. The show went well. We did it twice. And then the second part will be during art week. I’ve needed to make sure the installation will work without me being present. I may be giving birth then, so you will have to see it and let me know.
