19 February - 31 March 2021
Columns
Stefano Romano
Site specific, participative installation
2020/2021
Hosted by Paper Gallery, Prishtina.
The project starts with a reflection on the book as an object. The book is, in my view, a strange object. The moment we read it, it becomes ours, however, we struggle to physically separate from the object. It is a precious object, keeper of stories of any kind; during the lockdown in the year of the worldwide pandemic, books were one of the only ways we had left to keep travelling and meeting people.
For the realization of the project “Columns”, I asked all the people I was able to reach – also asking them to spread the word – to give me one of the books they have a home in the form of donations, maybe even the book they read during the lockdown.
All the books collected were installed in the gallery creating a physical relation with space, depicting a collective portrait of all the people who participated in the project.
At the end of the exhibition, all the books will be donated to two institutions, the library of the public jail in Prishtina and TOKA an NGO based in Prishtina that works with children’s education.
During the project implementation process, the books change their function 3 times; from the original function of being a book, they become a work of art and finally they return to their function of being books, enriched by a social function.
