Swiss artist Miriam Laura Leonardi is an explorer of our current cultural ensemble in her own unique manner: she addresses the relationship between life and culture focused especially on the observed and the observer using sound, video, photography and text. Last week, she premiered her first solo exhibition at the Zurich-based off-space Plymouth Rock.
Named “Models,” the exhibition examines communication between models, fashion professionals and fashion followers of various nationalities. “I observe the gestures amongst people that are physically working very close together but actually being strangers to each other – as well as a certain industry’s slogans and keywords, bound to the fact that English has become the hegemonic language,” says Leonardi, explaining that she recorded all of the material while participating in actual industry events.
“I cut the conversations into fragments and reassembled them in a way to make them merge into a new text that can either be thought of as a monologue or a new dialogue, in both cases anonymous. The actual process feels like editing a film; you look for the most rhythmic order that will seduce. In this way I take the words as visual as an actual image,” she says about the audio recording, which she turned into a “sort of” poem.
Her work is a perpetual exploration of communication and knowledge. “Communication, its distribution and translation is what we are confronted with constantly, it infiltrates our life. I feel that there is a gap between the increase of accessible knowledge against an apparent decrease of vocabulary,” she explains.
Miriam Leonardi’s exhibition is on view at Plymouth Rock until June 1st.
