Identity

"The work recounts a paradigmatic story of changing identities, made of many pieces that interlock inside a person and whose boundaries are impossible to define with clarity. The look of the other returns images that do not go into much depth and often have no real feedback. These phrases may appear only as statements of fossilized stereotypes; however after careful consideration they offer an intimation of the artist's many geographical shifts. In this sense they represent the encounter with the other, who looks at the artist and tries his hand at an impossible classification: from Montenegro, where due to his partly Albanian origins he was always perceived as 'a mix', to Italy, where the fragmentation of the former Yugoslav society has never been clearly perceived and consequently he was unproblematically labeled as 'a Slav'. In the first part of the work, the verb is conjugated in the past tense (thought), while in the subsequent ones it is in present tense. The work is in fact dated 2010/2014, made therefore in New York where the artist resides, and where different ethnic groups, Latinos, blacks, French try to define his identity inside a diverse community made up of many permanent refugees."
Daria Filardo