DEVOTION TO THE SUPERMARKET
_________________2021
The work was done during a 30-day artist residency in Kaunas, Lithuania through the CreArt network.
Devotion at the supermarketis a project focused on the research of contemporary ritual actions in which we are involved in our daily life and the sacralization of objects. I began the residency process by focusing on religious cults, mainly the Romuva practice, and object worship. My work seeks to interrogate where issues of "uncertainty" arise between vital meaning and social structures. It is there that an attitude of reaffirmation manifests itself. This is where the ritual manifests itself.
In the exhibition, we are led to bend over to the images of small objects lying under the two photos. They are everyday objects that have become sacred thanks to our privileged and communal relationship with them. Would you ever bow down to a micro ceramic cat? No. But if I tell you it's a sacred object, yes. And you probably already are. All the images on display are to be considered sacred, as they represent altars to our society and to our self, a reaffirmation that the community does not pre-exist but is created by the conscious repetition of the same gestures. There is no reality outside the concrete execution of the elements that constitute it, but the movements themselves constitute the single element.
Central to all the work is an emotional intensity due to devotion. Devotion is the experience of the flow that we are used to experiencing, devotion to desire.
We are inside a supermarket.
And we are subjects who desire and create desire.
© 2021 Silvia Mazzella