ANDANTE CON MOTO, a solo exhibition by Liliana Moro, which opened on 26 June at the PAC in Milan, is a project co-created by Diego Sileo, curator of the PAC, and Letizia Ragaglia, for the past two years director of the Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein in Vaduz, with which the PAC has co-produced an exhibition project for the first time.
At the entrance to the exhibition, small pink guides are offered that illustrate the exhibited works one by one. Each description is accompanied by a small sketch, also in pink, of the work in question. These sketches, created by Liliana Moro, are not only for informative purposes, but show us the extreme essentiality and linearity of the artist’s works, which take on and permeate with a profound meaning when this is explained in the descriptions in ‘Times New Roman’ font; looking up again from the pink booklet, the work we were analysing mutates and the object in front of us or the sound we were passively listening to now shines with a different aura.
Significant and omnipresent is the sound, each room of the exhibition has a more or less audible background; already upon entering we are immersed in … SENZA FINE (ENDLESS): the work, consisting of a loudspeaker, a recurring element in Liliana Moro’s works, emits endless versions of the song Bella Ciao, one of the most political songs ever composed; the amplifier is figuratively combined with the work VOICES towards the end of the exhibition; it is a series of blow-ups of newspaper cuttings and posters representing people intent on speaking into a megaphone or microphone. The images invoke the strength and collectivity that acoustic instruments can represent, such as the microphone that ‘gives voice’ to Milan (his home town), in particular to the skyline of the Bicocca district of the 1990s, which has now undergone profound transformations.
Next to the shot, which occupies an entire wall, we find LE NOMADI, a work at first glance kitschy and ‘noisy’ made up of school bags for children with or without wheels; the sound this time demands to be listened to more closely, in fact the loudspeakers are located inside the backpacks. Piled up in a corner, like the fruit of a careless primary schools class, the backpacks emit female voices of the women who have played an important role in Liliana Moro’s artistic career: these are delicate sounds, at least for the artist, that require attention and silence.
Attention and silence are also necessary in the next two installations, the focus is always on sound. In MOI of 2012, a circle of raised loudspeakers, which reminds us of Janet Cardiff’s sound architectures, repeats in unison a recording of the artist describing her performance Studio per un probabile equilibrio in movimento, first realised in 1997 together with Giovanna Luè. The loudspeaker cables, grouped and ordered, direct us towards the next room where ‘attention’ is drawn by a signal: in front of us is an expanse of broken glass that crumbles as we pass. The environment, which has neither title nor precise meaning, is emblematic of the essentiality of Moro’s art that unleashes our playful but fearful feelings; this time we are the sound source, we cautiously enter and deliberately leave this space that rekindles our senses.
Closing our tour is the scaling down of all the artist’s exhibition projects, a tangible and figurative archive that, placed on white pedestals of different heights, staggered next to the glass window overlooking the garden of Villa Bonaparte, reminds us of a Lilliputian village or a series of rickety architectural models made of salvaged materials, crumpled prints and knurled cardboard.
We are talking about SPAZI (SPACES), exhibited for the first time in 2019 at the Venice Biennale, but has been constantly changing since the late 1990s. In fact, on the occasion of this exhibition there is a new model, namely that of the sketch for Sundown, a site-specific work of 2023 realised for the CityLife park in Milan: about twenty bronze chairs, identical to the classic plastic garden chairs, are turned towards the West, next to them a loudspeaker broadcasts RadioTre live until the hour of sunset, an alarm signal precedes the silence and warns the spectators that it is time to sit down and admire the blushing horizon.
Pietro Guerrini
Liliana Moro. ANDANTE CON MOTO, PAC – Padiglione d’Arte Contemporanea, 26.06 – 15.09.2024
images: (cover 1) Liliana Moro, «Via Breda 122, Milan, 1989». Carta da parati. Courtesy the Artist (2) Liliana Moro,« …Senza Fine», 2010. Ph: Stefan Altenburger Photography, Zurich. Courtesy the Artist and Rodeo, Londra / Piraeus (3) Liliana Moro, «Le Nomadi», 2023. Ph: Stefan Altenburger Photography Zurich. Courtesy the Artist and Rodeo, London/ Piraeus (4) Liliana Moro, «Moi», 2012. Ph: Stefan Altenburger Photography Zurich Courtesy the Artist and Rodeo, London / Piraeus (5) Liliana Moro,” “, 2001. installation view at Kunstmuseum Vaduz. Ph: Stefan Altenburger, Photography Zurich. Courtesy the Artist and Rodeo, London / Piraeus (6) Liliana Moro, «Spazi», 2019/2023/2024. Ph: Stefan Altenburger, Photography Zurich. Courtesy the Artist
