Case Umane - why I started to think about the theme "house/home"

At first, I have to explain that "Case Umane" is the title of my first solo exhibition (about 2/3 years ago) and there is an italian title that means "Human houses", this is because the artworks in that exhibition were the results of creative "walks" that I did. Before to start to thinking to express my thoughts using arts, I have a special feeling with the "houses" as the place where we can stay safe from the world, where we can live our best moments or the most sad moments, the house like a box where every emotion live, the house like a bookshelf where we can place every memories and where things become memories. In my life, after I left my parent's house to live by myself (with my daughter, sure), I lived in many different houses and I collected many different memories (happy and bad)  in every of them. An house, for me, it's more than a simple buildings. It's my nest.

In Italy we use the term "casa" for home and also for house. Yes, we have just an unique word to talk about it: casa. Casa, for us, is more similar to the meaning of "home" than to "house"(now you can understand because sometimes I wrote home or house in a wrong way ^_^). When I think about a building where someone live I think something more than wall, roof and floor, but I also think about emotions, feelings, family, something more complex.

For example, about the story "The fall of the Usher house" by Poe, in italian "The Usher house" become "Casa Usher", as the same way "home sweet home" become "Casa dolce casa".

Ok, you have to know that one of the most hard things for English teacher is to teach to italian students the differences between house and home ^_^

Starting by the theme of "casa", the idea of the creative thought about it come to me after a poems reading. I met an italian poet (Matteo Pelliti) during a book signing, he read some of her poem about the connection between his emotion and the rooms of his home and it impressed me because I felt the same sensations in my life and in the houses where I lived. It made me think and so I read some other novels, poems, etc about the "casa", about the feelings that a "casa" can give us, about the influence of different architectures on the life of who lives in the buildings and I started to express my emotions and sensations using different materials.

I created little corners of the houses in some wooden box, I paint some tiny houses in the body of a man sit on a chair, I started to create my little wooden houses with metal legs, my "Monolocali Biculi" that gave me the satisfaction to feel myself (for the first time) really a real and concret artist in evolution, on the right way. I felt myself someone who can give sensations to others and not just to myself and it was really super (also because I sold the most part of the artworks in that exhibition ^_^).

Now here is almost time to sleep and so I wish you a good night from my casa ^_^

See ya tomorrow!!

Silvia