Everything in its place by Lucia Veronesi

Everything in its place is an intimate action which takes place in the kitchen: the actors being the objects that inhabit this domestic space. The furniture and utensils: moved, and stacked, deprived of their normal function, transform to build alternative landscapes. They transport us and tell us about other worlds. Reversing the usual process, the pictures came first in this project, followed by words. Lucia Veronesi made videos and collages, afterwards Tiziano Scarpa wrote the texts inspired by her works.

You should have two mouths. One to eat, the other to speak. It is not acceptable that the same organ that pronounces the food, chews words to savour them. The breath gets contaminated, the teeth become damaged due to sweetish sentences. You should have two nostrils, one for sniffing, the other for breathing. You should have two eyes, one to look, the other to imagine.

The secret desire of water boiling and turning into steam is to vanish. The secret desire of food cooking and turning into a smell is to vanish. The secret desire of meals entering our body and turning into movements and emotions is to vanish. The secret desire of this sentence entering your eyes and turning into thought in your head is…

I went into the kitchen and saw flowers of fire with blue petals coming out of the stove. The tap poured dusty sand into the sink. The refrigerator solidified the air, transforming it into small cubes of sky. The microwave gave birth to living hares. I saw an electric whisk floating like a jellyfish, from one wall to another, and I dared to speak to him: “What happened? How come I have these visions?” It stopped for a moment and answered me: “Look, you’re our hallucination.” Then it disappeared.

Drawn to landscapes and the histories of those that inhabit them – natural and urban, intimate and domestic, artist Lucia Veronesi (b. 1976, IT) works within the medium of collage, painting, drawing, photography, installation and video animation. Her work presents a vision of a world poised between that which is real and that of an abstract dimension creating ambivalent tales, halfway between documentation and imagination. A fusion of techniques overlap, creating a reciprocal invasion of fields and disciplines encompassing anthropology and sociology within her practice. In 2011 Lucia co-founded Spazio Punch, non-profit space in Venice, which she co-directed until 2015. Currently working with Yellow, a non-profit space focused on contemporary painting and Atrii, a collective based in Milan, Lucia has participated in artist residencies in Italy and abroad including: Simposio di Pittura at Fondazione Lac O Le Mon, Lecce; Kunstnarhuset Messen, Norway; Default 17, Ramdom, Gagliano del Capo; Mustarinda, Hiryinsalmi, Finland; Painting Detours, Udine; Sanskriti Kendra, New Delhi, India; Fondazione Ratti, Como. Lucia has exhibited widely nationally and internationally, and her videos have been selected for several national and international film festivals.

Tiziano Scarpa was born in Venice, Italy in 1963. He is a novelist, poet, and playwright. Scarpa’s third novel, Stabat Mater (Serpent’s Tail, 2011) was awarded the Strega Prize, Italy’s most prestigious literary honor. His acclaimed Venice is a Fish: a Sensual Guide (Gotham Books, 2008) is known throughout the world as an idiosyncratic celebration of Venice.