Me under the sheet

The project consists of eight self-portraits entitled “Me under the sheet” beside the picture entitled "The sheet". This work has been produced on the shores of Cosenza area, in Calabria, southern Italy, in July 2016, and it was a sort of call towards the sea, as a way to protest against the deaths of migrant people in the Mediterranean Sea.

Each beach is represented as provided with his own dead corpse, considering how many were the people swallowed up by the sea with their makeshift boats, while they were desperately looking for a better future.

An artist is such when takes the responsibility of active citizenship, breaking up the silence of the daily life and its 'politically correctness’, with gestures that are simple and poignant at the same time.

Putting myself in the shoes of those dispensable people, however symbolically, made me feel like a dead corpse as well: under a sheet, one beach after the other, it was my solitary way to search for a manifestation of dissent. Thus, sometime “challenging” the tourists, in other instances more timidly withdrawing into myself, I have done a performative "solo action", urgent and yet necessary in order to exorcise the more distressing year ever lived, as a citizen in total dismay at the war bulletins of the shipwrecks of migrants.

The project was carried out during the residency The Bocs. It binds to my work in the field of multiculturalism and migration that I’ve been working on since 2007 (links below), alongside my engagement within the association artists.sociologists "dialogue between contemporary art and sociology” ( (https://it-it.facebook.com/artists.sociologists/) and my thesis entitled “Unexpected encounters when artists and sociologists dialogue” (2009).
http://www.patriziabonardi.net/file/liquid_collapses_Patrizia_Bonardi.html
http://www.patriziabonardi.net/file/open_to_meet_gamec_Patrizia_Bonardi.html
http://www.patriziabonardi.net/file/open_to_meet_Patrizia_Bonardi.html
http://www.patriziabonardi.net/file/raft_sea_Patrizia_Bonardi.html
http://www.patriziabonardi.net/file/migranti_mari.html
http://www.patriziabonardi.net/file/mare_prigione.html
http://www.patriziabonardi.net/file/rituale_-_fiori_migranti.html
http://www.patriziabonardi.net/file/Fiori_migranti.html