Chiara Boeri: MAIPIU-NEVERAGAIN
Artist(s):
Title:
- MAIPIU-NEVERAGAIN
Exhibition:
Creation Year:
- 2005
Medium:
- Mixed Media
Size:
- 122 inches x 52 inches
Category:
Artist Statement:
The sun was beginning to beat upon the fields, fresh risen into the vault of heaven from the slow still currents of deep Oceanus, when the two armies met. They could hardly recognise their dead, but they washed the clotted gore from off them, shed tears over them, and lifted them upon their waggons. Priam had forbidden the Trojans to wail aloud, so they heaped their dead sadly and silently upon the pyre, and having burned them went back to the city of llus. The Achaeans in like manner heaped their dead sadly and silently on the pyre, and having burned them went back to their ships. Homer, Iliad, Book VII These words appear, in Italian and in English in my work, expressing my deepest feelings about all wars. Last year was extremely trying for me. I got quite ill, and death became a very serious thought. I believe that in such moments one either closes oneself in grief or fights and works a lot, to try to win. Then again, I looked around me and felt all the world’s tragedies in a manner even stronger than usual and thought of myself as a very lucky person. I often spend my summer in Greece, travelling in quite deserted places. During those trips, I have noticed some very colourful little iron boxes shaped like little houses, sitting on short poles on the side of roads, especially of narrow mountain roads. Greeks place them wherever someone dies in a car accident. They remember the dead and remind the living. They’re not beautiful, but in a strange sort of way, merry. Inside the boxes are several objects: a lighter, a bottle of coke or water, a candle, sometimes an icon, and a silver goblet. They always moved me. The thought of all the wars that are going on forced upon me the completion of an old image that to me symbolizes all wars: a lonely wall still standing, smoke, the shadow of the Twin Towers, some planes passing by: sadness, desolation. And all the little Greek iron houses seemed to have to be there. Millions should be painted. To remember and remind.
