àncóra

An accent mark is all it takes to change everything: form, meaning, and direction. There is never just one possibility. Liliana Moro has dedicated a large part of her work to the investigation of polysemy or the ability of words to have multiple meanings. Such is the case in this work, àncóra. Meaning both “anchor” and “again,” depending on pronunciation, the word as it is annotated here evokes both meanings at once. When the first syllable is stressed, it is a noun that describes an anchor, an object that stabilizes; in the second, when the second syllable is stressed, it is an adverb meaning “still,” “even now,” and “again,” denoting a repetition or return as well as temporal duration. The work is an example of the connection between linguistic experimentation in Arte Povera and contemporary art.