Nosy

Nosy

Today we invite digital media to be part of every aspect of our lives without carefully considering its effects. The excitement produced by the irresistible pull of technology leaves us in a state of daze. As the space between public and private blurs, reality loses objectivity and crumbles into the endless pit of relativism. We ominously find ourselves sucked into a space of surveillance whilst being imperceptibly manipulated by Silicon Valley algorithms.

Despite the doom and gloom premise, Valentina Loffredo’s new work at first glance appears positively light with brightly colored geometric settings, playful noses poking out and use of an aesthetic that nods to the world of illustration and advertising. We are attracted and drawn in by these inviting features and only after a closer look we come to realize that the nose is actually a surveillance tool. Either real, prosthetic or sculpted by the artist, the nose makes you feel observed as if it were a pair of critical eyes. Someone is very nosy, the artist seems to say, it is not just us peering into other people’s lives, we too are under intense scrutiny.

The works in the series examine the digital man who, confronted with reality, often perceived as flawed, takes refuge in images: colored, seductive, harmonious. Social media with its attractive functions exerts an obsessive appeal, a vehicle to project one’s alternate reality and a place to be reassured by a community of like-minded people. In this delusional state it is all too easy to miss the warnings of the hidden obscure side. And we are fooled, sold. The question should be: who is watching whom?

Undisputed protagonist of this project, the nose takes on many forms, leaping out of the images to become freestanding sculptures in multiple dimensions and manifesting itself in various ways depending on the context. At times a real bombardment of noses fills a room. In other circumstances, noses take us by surprise in an urban context, engaging with us as Public Art. The playful tone of this project is further enhanced by the artist’s book on which a magnetic nose detaches and reattaches transforming the publication into a sculptural object. In this multimedia project, contamination also affects Loffredo’s photographs which are at times set up in small spaces specifically built for the shot, other times digitally reconstructed.