The Green Room

Dolls: ancient toys whose history has been lost in the darkness of antiquity. We find them in the graves of the Egyptians and of Etruscans and what is really interesting to observe for our artistic aims, it’s not that much the material they were molded of, composed by wood, fabric or terracotta, but to what extend the clothing that covered them; a clothing which by reflecting the fashion of the century was a bearer of strong social references. Instead, Artan Shabani proposes to us in this image, a totally naked doll; whose nakedness, though being much more grave and representative than any other garment, – takes us into a provocative universe that reminds us a little of the desecrated. Art of Maurizio Cattelan, whose child-mockups hung on the trees of Piazza XXIV Maggio in Milan, made a big fuss giving rise to controversial opinions and ferocious arguments.

Georg Brandes, critic and exponent of the tip of the literary naturalism in Scandinavia of the 1800’s, was usually asserting that Art – can be considered alive only when it places the problems under accusation! – And in this sense the mockups of Cattelan, like the doll of Shabani, assumes the features of a theatre of the absurdity, overturning the rules of culture and society in a continuous gesture of insubordination. The doll of Shabani – naked and deprived of the limbs – is a raw image of strong emotional impact that tells the tragedy of children sold and forced to prostitute themselves. The doll – a game for antonomasia for the childhood period which is seen as a metaphor of the negation in this very same childhood, as a denunciation against violence and indifference; a sad representation that sheds light on the human comedy through the filter of Art, forcing the spectator to reflect, raising questions on the issues of guilt and responsibility. Already more than a century ago, the historical modernism on sail from Duchamp would explode the rage on the planet with the Art slogan as an enlightening, also through and thanks to the horror.

And here the horrible object reaches at last under the roof obligating us to become aware of those problems that – blinded from the easy life and the comfort – perceived ourselves as distant and strange. To the doll of Shabani – drawn here and there from desolating residual of white liquid – has remained nothing more if not the sad and deep expression of its eyes, that in itself encloses a last painful outcry for help; but even this is not perceived by the rushing passer-by who scarcely notices in that look something hipnotic, charming, some kind of spiral that dazes, thus persuading him to throw some coins in a somewhat used white handkerchief. So the darkness never ends! And the goal of the artist is therefore to launch an outcry of alarm to the society, thus making the individuals aware of that unhealthy numbness that makes them indifferent in front of every atrocities, accustomed as they are to watch the slide of the tv screened images of guerrilla, and tortured bodies. That same society that becomes angry for the provocative image of an Artist, remains then incomprehensibly unarmed in front of the barbarism of the children’s prostitution. And then it is only by carrying the horror out in the street that the people can become true protagonist of History, and of all those who succumbed and turned down are unable to tell; Like those Wretched people so very well described by Victor Hugo.