Moscow Biennale – Interview - Curator Maurizio Vanni What is the Behind the Mirror project about? Behind the Mirror is a project linked to the main theme, Rewriting Worlds, which means redesigning our life from scratch, redefining the environment we live in, reconsidering our living spaces and recreating the norms that govern our history, by connecting with our memory structure. Every person has inside them a natural disposition towards change, towards the natural evolution of their being, but laziness and fear often prevent them from abandoning what is felt as reassuring - so they decide to remain in a static present, a passive dimension where they submit to life, a forced pseudo-reality that is the equivalent of self-deception. Standing behind the mirror means going beyond the appearance of things, not being satisfied with the surface of reality, trying not to trust a simple, reflected image. Before Rewriting Worlds, a person must find serenity within, restoring the inner balance that guides them to a two-way relationship with their human self. They will need the courage to live their emotions and passions to the fullest, the inner impulse to be themselves, and a thirst for the essence of knowledge. What inspired you to create this project? The project was inspired by the general title of the event and reflects, at least in part, my thoughts about the contemporary world. Living in a society that always gets faster and more voracious, where inaccuracy, shallowness and ephemerality prevail over deeper, more genuine content, we feel the need to restore our balance and identity through a non-conventional reading of reality. Standing behind the mirror means going beyond the appearance of things, not being satisfied with the surface of reality, trying not to trust a simple, reflected image. The contemporary, engaged artist, a witness of his time and author of his own destiny, must be able to involve spectators in an open, individual action, spurring them to reread, not just the world around them, but their own inner world and essence. How did you select the artists participating in this project? The initial idea - after the choice of content - was to tackle the same subject from different viewpoints, using complementary disciplines, so as to create an open, interactive space. The choice to include photography, video art, painting, site-specific installation and sign-color stimuli is meant to show how creativity can help users confronted with a multi-disciplinary installation develop a multi-sensorial approach, which prepares them for emotional involvement and conceptual sharing. I chose Francesco Attolini for his familiarity with new media, intellectual dynamism, and for his will to systematically use traditional images violated by technological innovation. Christian Balzano instead attracted my attention for his desire to act and interact, his determination to involve spectators, both physically and mentally, turning them into users as they live his space and adhere to his idea. I selected Lolita Timofeeva for her brainy approach, her insistence on introspection, her symbolical and conceptual suggestions, which compel users to expose themselves, to become aware of their own emotions (and of their vices and virtues) even before they process visual inputs. What is the meaning of this project and what are its goals? Living behind the mirror means giving reality a new reading, overcoming the limitations caused by conditioning received or acquired during our social activity, through our social self as masked humans. It means going beyond all conventions, discovering other ways to deal with old situations, inventing new formulas and renewing approaches and lifestyles. Inside each of us are multiple facets and hidden, neglected or forgotten qualities. If these parts of us are reawakened, they can change our lives, revealing completely unknown aspects of reality, allowing us to reinvent and restructure every element of our existence. The true aim of the project is to show that humans will be able to regain complete, genuine expressive freedom by becoming the real, undisputed protagonists of their own existences, provided that they can take off their masks, before they become so similar to the faces that those who wear them are no longer able to tell the difference. What does 'beautiful' mean for you? Without being rhetorical or evoking the great masters of classical esthetics, I would say that in today's art, beauty is a highly individual, subjective notion. In this particular historical moment, when thought continues to be privileged over form, content can be expressed by means of any compositional solution, and globalization has generated geographical, philosophical and esthetic hybridization, each of us probably has a mental image associated with remembered, real, or ideal beauty. To me, 'beautiful' is synonymous with pure, uncontaminated and harmonious. There is no permanent physical, structural beauty, only something which strongly attracts us in a particular historical moment, but which could be rejected at a later time. There is a spiritual, deep kind of beauty, impossible to explain rationally or located spatially, which upsets the sensory apparatus and subverts all conventions. This kind of beauty is another word for love. How would you sum up your idea-project in a visual image? It would be a large cage, made of strong, heavy bars. On one side, two bars appear bent so as to allow a living being to pass through them. And on the cage a sign that reads: “Emotions”.