Valentina Medda

In my latest body of work, I’ve been inquiring the relationship between the body and the external environment focusing on our gendered presence in the urban space and our way to be/move/live on it.

My practice revolves around the concept of flaneuse, the female stroller wandering in the city  and finding ways to appropriate it from a female point of view. In doing so, my body always plays an important role in terms of  mapping the space, finding connections with the external environment and changing perspectives. Whether by using my body as a measuring tool, positioning myself into the urban space or strolling around by night in order to map the city’s boroughs in terms of perception of danger; I have been exploring the possibilities of blurring the line between private and public, body and architecture, self and object; imposing my internal perception of time, challenging  the idea of belonging and freedom, and raising questions about anonymity and loneliness. Through those issues my work attempts at raising questions about local government, social organizations, gender issues, women, belonging and urban planning.

Although I use video, photography and installation, all my work is performance based.  Performance is for me a “philosophy in action”, our body being a “thinking body”*, our coordinates being our point of view on the world and our only way to relate to it.  My performances happen mostly in the urban space as interventions requiring a specific time: the time for the process to take place, for my body to experience, for the others to notice, for the city to become transformed and accept this transformation.

Find out more at www.valentinamedda.com

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