Interview | Giovanni Gaggia

This interview with Giovanni Gaggia, a multifaceted artist from the Marche region of Italy with an extreme sensitivity to inner as well as social and political issues, is a peculiar one, in which there is no room for any polemic. With an artist so clearly positioned vis-à-vis reality, so deeply committed to the construction of reflections, whether material or immaterial, that find meaning in something very close to the terms “justice” and “well-being,” one cannot miss the opportunity to better understand his actions, as well as his feeling. Listening to Gaggia means questioning, often, one’s own beliefs, it means committing oneself to open oneself to others, it means having the opportunity to improve oneself.

Fabio Giagnacovo: You are an extremely multifaceted artist: in your works we find drawing, painting, sculpture, photography, video, and performance, but as we can read on your statement (actually it is easily noticed even just by looking at the series of works you have produced in the last decade) you prefer mostly drawing, performance, and embroidery. Is there a connection between these three media? What is the process that leads you to choose the most suitable medium, in your works? And finally, we are always led to think, superficially, that in the art world embroidery is a feminist practice, in your case it clearly is not but it is often similarly linked, strongly and clearly, to a social and political sense, what does embroidery mean to you?

Giovanni Gaggia: The thread that unites the 3 languages you mentioned, valid for any media I decide to use is time. “On the Thread of Time” I find to be a wonderful title. I would add, perhaps, a subtitle: “a political journey.” My drawing is done through overlapping marks, almost tracing the classic drypoint technique in etching that was part of my training as a teenager. It now sits there in a corner of my making: it has been waiting for me since 2011. Embroidery is by its nature a time-dilated process, the most intimate, sometimes the deepest, practice that allows one to approach meditation: a mantra. Finally, the performance: it has a sometimes indefinite moment of action, and in this temporal space something unique and unrepeatable happens. My intention is always to leave the viewer with a moment that can change him or her and take it away. For this reason, in recent years, I have decided to set my gaze on contemporary dance. For me it is the greatest art form, where deep knowledge of the body is combined with a strong concept to make something extraordinary happen.

Now we can turn to the analysis of the subtitle. My work is always deeply and consciously political, the practice has defined the man I am and charted a clear social role.

My most recent solo exhibition at the Museo Riso in Palermo curated by Dasirè Maida put the spotlight on my work alongside the Relatives of the Victims of the Ustica Massacre and the family of Aldo Davanzali, ITAVIA’s majority shareholder who passed away in 2006. The title What Was to Happen, which I had been carrying since 2015, has changed to POETIC POLITICAL PRACTICE. In these three words that all begin with the same letter, with a clear reference to Pier Paolo Pasolini, my entire actions as an artist and as a man are told as far as embroidery, which becomes for me a means of telling stories, that it is a man who does it is yet another political gesture.

The drawing, the pathos-laden performances, the personal act that becomes a metaphor and sense of something that transcends the self, the poetic-political tendency, the social engagement, the role of memory. Let’s say that if we added honey and felt, Joseph Beuys would easily come to mind. Is there something that, in particular, struck you and/or strikes you about the artist-schaman? Is it correct, in your opinion, to think that “The revolution is us” or is it utopian?

Struck and sunk.

He is now in my daily life, an important part of my training, my gaze has often turned to him aspiring for his gold, trying to achieve some spiritual awareness.

I repeat again on this occasion: my greatest performance is Casa Sponge. My metaproject that lives an existence of its own and that thanks to the many passages, of artists and others, has been charged with an energy of its own. Among them is one who has made visible the political concept inherent in the gesture of opening the doors of the house: it is Mario Consiglio who has reopened the blind windows of the farmhouse with two large mirrors, in the upper one where the clouds are reflected is written YOU ARE A LEGEND. At the bottom is WE ARE. The installation is an homage to Joseph Beuys, breaking the barrier between inside and outside and seeking the balance between man, art and nature. In this way, the design philosophy, inspired by the master-shaman, is made definitively obvious.

It is utopian but correct to think so. Daily I think about this sentence, it is a kind of guiding beacon that outlines how I behave, from the smallest things, beyond the work of art.

You have been working for years on the series of works “Quello che doveva accadere”, dedicated to the Ustica massacre, a project that reflects on the link between art and memory and the importance of memory as civic engagement. Undoubtedly, however, a project about a fact that is somehow unresolved, still smoky and not at all clear, also brings attention to that fact, brings it out into the open with all its contradictions. In other words, it is the other side of the coin of reportage. What can art do in front of this rubber wall, as Andrea Purgatori called it? And how does such an emotionally heavy project come about, somehow reflecting the death of 81 people, the pain of 81 families, the deafening silence that has lasted for more than 40 years, the fact that justice has never been done?

82 families, is added that of Aldo Davanzali, ITAVIA’s majority shareholder who for all intents and purposes is considered the 82nd victim. I cite three judicial passages where the truth clearly emerges. It is from 1999 the order of Investigating Judge Rosario Priore in which he writes that the DC-9 was shot down: “the lives of 81 innocent citizens were broken in an action, which was properly an act of war, a de facto and undeclared war, a covert international police operation against our country, whose borders and rights were violated. No one has given the slightest explanation of what happened.” In 2012, on the other hand, the Rome appeals court convicted the ministries of defense and transport for failure to exercise control and supervision. According to civil judges, the state is responsible for “failure to control and supervise the complex and dangerous situation that had arisen in the skies over Ustica.” Finally, 2020, when yet another ruling confirms Priore’s conclusions: the plane was shot down as part of an episode of war and definitively condemns the two ministries to pay ITAVIA 330 million euros in compensation.

Art is the element chosen by the Association of Relatives of the Victims of the Ustica Massacre to ensure that the lights on this story never go out. It complements justice, prods politics, raises civil awareness, and keeps history alive. It is the same action accomplished by the 81 lights suspended above the plane’s carcass in Christian Boltanski’s extraordinary installation for the Ustica Memorial Museum in Bologna. I saw it in 2010 and that happening entered me, I started drawing, I did it for months. I reproduced in pencil some objects that emerged from the sea of Ustica, the line moved around blood traces. Seven plates were born first, I showed them to Daria Bonfietti, President of the Association of Relatives of the Victims of the Ustica Massacre. Among her first words, “What had to happen,” this sentence prompted me to continue to tell this tragic story and begin to study the importance of art in memory. Talk, three solo exhibitions on the subject, two museum works, a publication published by NFC editions, an artist’s book designed for wide circulation with about 60 contributions, and an investigation born in the pages of Artribune forty years after the event. “[…] Let’s analyze the terms Time and Justice in relation to this tragic event, moreover, if it was, what is the value of entrusting the memory to art?” That silence you describe has generated strong voices and some constants, like mine.

In 2008 it funds Casa Sponge, near Pergola, “first and foremost artist-run space and artist residency,” the website reads, but also much more: it is laboratory, it is home, yours and those who live there for a few days, taking something from it and leaving something else, in both material and immaterial terms, it is nineteenth-century farmhouse in the nature of the Marche region pervaded by art, it is meditative and interior space but also a community place free of superstructures, it is artistic and cultural space on the fringes of the artistic and cultural circuit and yet so alive and relevant, it is a courageous choice. What does Casa Sponge mean to you, in inner terms, as the artist who founded it? And how, does this physical and sensory space relate to the increasingly pervasive digital space of contemporary society, (which you certainly do not deny)? Do these two simultaneous realities somehow clash or is there a communion of purpose in them?

My life is characterized by sharp choices. It is easy to reconstruct it through crazy, unconventional choices, always with a vision, at first more nuanced, now defined in detail.

Casa Sponge is none other than the place where my great-grandparents redeemed themselves from sharecroppers to landowning farmers. It is land that saw me grow up, it is a handkerchief on the hillside of Midnight. The tiny hamlet gives the area its name, two chestnuts with very large fronds don’t let the light in. My house stands at the highest part of the knoll, here the light comes through, and how it comes through. It is a place that never let me go, even though I tried to escape. Here there was something to transform and something to solve. It was not possible to do it alone, so the door opened in a gesture at the same time with a double reading, a request for help and politics. On my own I could not do it, and welcoming becomes philosophy. To date I believe it is my most successful work of art; it follows the thread of my existence. Now another stage awaits for me and the house. I see it in the distance, but I cannot yet reveal what lies ahead.

If there were no digital Casa Sponge would be a hermitage, the “new” technologies are crucial, they allow me the luxury of working from here, they allow me to put the “restance” into action. For example, social media has been crucial in making Casa Sponge more known. I remember the intervention of an influencer who decided to help us promote the project during the lockdown, the return was important. There is a commonality of purpose, digital has been a facilitator, it has helped me follow my calling by allowing me to be able to do it from a decidedly decentralized place. The contrast seems obvious, one must be careful not to look at the stars while listening to WhatsApp voicemails.

You frequently engage in educational workshops, often with children and young people in a school setting. It is not common to find an artist who devotes so much time to educating younger people. In what ways do you think contemporary art can enrich these young minds? And, more generally, why do you do it? Do you believe “simply” that it is right to do so, or is there a deeper drive in conveying certain poetic-social themes?

It’s kind of like in the house, it’s about turning life into a performance that never ends. In this time there are others, I like to work with all age groups from childhood to third grade. For me it is a duty to do so, otherwise I feel like I am lying, I have a physical need to know that I can do something, if it is established that art cannot change the world, but individual people can. Daria Bonfietti describes me as the citizen artist.

images (cover – 1) Giovanni Gaggia, illustration by Nikla Cetra (2) Giovanni Gaggia, Pratica Poetica Politica, Museo Riso Palermo, ph Michele Alberto Sereni (3) Giovanni Gaggia, «Pratica Poetica Politica», production of the work with the students IV Vittorio Emanuele High School, ph Michele Alberto Sereni (4) Giovanni Gaggia, «Quello che Doveva Accadere. Pratica Poetica Politica di», in primo piano l’opera «Sanguinis Suavitas», Palermo Museo Riso, ph Michele Alberto Sereni (5) Giovanni Gaggia,« Il tempo se ne va», 2021, still da video, MUSMA, Matera (6) «Eva Hide, My dad loves me», 2017, painted majolica and baby panties, environmental dimensions (7) Casa Sponge, ph:Antonio Oleari (8) Giovanni Gaggia, illustration by Nikla Cetra