Stefano Labate

In our view, talking about perennial topicality means talking about our perception of time, history, and human interactions. As we considered this project a collective debate, we’d like to hear more about your ideas as well. What is your perception of perennial topicality? And which element of this idea do you think that the artwork that you presented wants to portray?

I wanted to deal with the issue of the identity crisis of humanity in “late modernity”, which consists in the perpetual feeling of crisis and precariousness from the identity point of view. The way I portrayed myself, the post production, the color palette for those pictures enhance the concept expressed before and are really evocative about my feelings towards this unsure lifetime and my perennial undefined identity and position in nowadays society and system. 

We are all the sum of our experiences, which shape our personality and perception. How did your personal history affect the creation of your artworks and in what way did you bring it into your project?

I never felt respected for my humanity, considering the actual status quo of nowadays italian society. What I experienced has definitely shaped each inch of myself. Each work has a series of numbers as its title, that corresponds to an exact moment of my existence that has changed my existence.

You can’t see in them what I am talking about or what I am referring to, but you can see what each event produced in terms of feelings, one lowest common denominator: the perennial uncertainty.

Due to the centrality of technology as well as the redefinition of our personal space, in these pandemic times the intimacy and the lack of it are now not only lived but conceived differently. How would you describe your perception of intimacy, relationships, and connection today?

I would say that actually this lack has been enhanced not by Covid but with Social Media, which I consider the exact digital transcription of a real pandemic, touching our society in reality on so many levels. The fact that the consideration of ourselves and our credibility can be based on the potential level of digital branding of our own personality and that all is decided by an algorithm makes me furious. My life’s quality can be divided in two parts: before and after the harsh digitalization of nowadays interpersonal communication. 

What do you expect from the audience’s experience after viewing your work in this digital environment? How do you think that our endless consumption of digital contents is affecting the production and the fruition of artworks? Do you think the virtual exhibition experience will continue to be a possible tool for presenting your research?

I don’t know what people will think, but it’s a pity that there is not going to be the occasion to show them in reality, considering that the perception of art and the feeling that it can give us is different in reality compared to watching pixels. Beside this, presenting my work digitally will be ok, because the essence of them will be in any case shown regardless of the medium that is going to be used.