Unveiled Paths

Installation – Symbolic Action in Participatory Art, Body Art, Public Art, Social Sculpture, Living Sculpture

by Teri Volini

A work created for “On the Trail of the Arabs” – Pietrapertosa, Lucanian Dolomites – August 2011

A sign of the new times is recognising that the Gaze of the Other somehow belongs to us and calls for attention and respect…

10–12 August 2011

As part of the unusual event “On the Trail of the Arabs”, in the heart of Pietrapertosa, an evocative village in the Lucanian Dolomites, the performer Teri Volini presents Unveiled Paths, an Installation – Symbolic Action in Participatory Art, Body Art and Public Art.

The gazes of some twenty “veiled women” peep out from the windows of the ancient Arab quarter, recalling the discreet way our own women looked out from under dark shawls just a few generations ago, catching the attention of visitors and carrying it beyond immediate surprise.

These images are an implicit invitation to deep and constructively critical reflection on issues connected with the Veil, the Arab world and beyond; on the interconnection between our places and “different” cultures – something indispensable today if we truly want to understand human behaviour and help create a renewed, better humanity…

The work was created ad hoc, in full synergy with the place, which not only serves as a perfect setting but allows the work to become part of it – in perfect harmony with the place and its traditions – in an original version of the Artist’s decade-long research on the Veil and on “other” cultures.

It is a work in progress, developing a theme of great interest and relevance, with many facets still to be discovered, among them the awareness and practice of multiculturalism as a founding factor of third-millennium society: seeing “others” as a stimulus for knowledge and personal and social enrichment rather than as a loss or a danger.

The large installation Unveiled Paths was reactivated in August 2012, during the event “On the Trail of the Arabs”.

Image gallery