The future meant the gates that must open and the walls that must turn into carpets. Fleur Jaeggy, Sweet Days of Discipline
The epigraph is the first white lie: Valentina borrows a quote - it is not fruitful impulse of humble writing. But how can we resist this superlative hallucination of décor, all the masonry turning into woollen fleece? So let’s begin, with willing scientific rigour, to understand all the misunderstandings and delicate deceits that have found home here.
Cameranesi is asked to make a paravent: the nature of a screen already suggests concealment, am- biguity, an opaque object – but what wind will it block? That icy draught between the dining room and the hallway? In Valentina’s mind, and in her hands, is the idea of making a gate. And so she ma- kes her gate-screen, a Melottian memory. This first object is a lie; in both material and design there is more than one trompe. Most obviously, the folded cardboard becomes copperwork, which in turn resembles cardboard in the way it is folded. Here it is, the whole charade extravagantly wrapped and tied with a bow – or we could say a dog chasing its tail, and I would suggest a brown poodle. The cut/folded cardboard/copper forms small objects that are more like unstable prototypes than actual items. A side-dish of deformed little trinkets is a jewellery-box obscuring a stencil, dangling with vi- scose ribbons. These ribbons are reminiscent of the glorious Viennese Werkstatte, when tassels had a dignified function. Here however, they display their irresistible uselessness. And, a side-dish in the sense of the recipe rather than its place on the side, for what else is a side-dish but the joyful decora- tion of a nutritious boring meal?
And here there are delectable side-dishes. Cameranesi concocts the cloying delight of American do- mestic vernacular: the saccharine wallpaper of Laura Ashley stencils and the suggestions – exquisite aesthetics not evasive accounting - of Martha Stewart, the MDF belied by the endless floral motifs of the prince of chintz, Mario Buatta. Essentially the other side of postmodernism, the 1980s hiding fearfully behind a return to camp, a new Biedermeier with added aspartame- truthfully, not entirely harmless. In Valentina’s little rooms, in her bargain-counters and her micro-haberdasheries, lie subtle danger, sweet perversion, yet another fiction. Copper tables with galvanised legs and a rich enamel top, glazed with a whispered impression of a patterned silk scarf. The watery, faded, smudged me- mory of a loss, but with sharp edges. Dazzling nail polish that snags tights. A carefree thigh tied with a bright red garter, the leftover packaging to be hung with other ribbons, bows and frills, on the soft coat rack that decorates the wall. Here we arrive at the last tangled deception: limp with fatigue, a not-so-cheerful souvenir from the kingdom of carnival – Viareggio - where jokes are masks and lies are dusty coattails.
Anna Franceschini
Location
Satine
