QUARANTINE TRILOGY

Performance: artist’s home, broadcasted on www.corpisulpalco.com, on May 1st and 2nd, 2020

Video: 10 ′ 39 “, color, sound, and 3 + 2ap
video credits: concept: LIUBA, Performance: LIUBA and SOLE; camera Mario Duchesneau

QUARANTINE TRILOGY is a performance and video work prepared for the virtual performances marathon “Corpi sul Palco Performance from home in quarantine time” curated by Andrea Contin, streamed live on the website www.corpisulpalco.com on May 1 and 2, 2020 and now still visible online in a web version (the full version was just streamed live for the event and it’s available for collectors in edition of 3).

The work is representative of this special moment of LIUBA’s life, full of joy thanks to her beloved newborn son Sole. The video is composed either by intimate personal home scenes and either by a new performance art piece inspired by VIRUS TABLEAUX VIVANT, a previous work realized in 2004 for the Flash Art Fair in Milan and part of the VIRUS series, where the artist was performing in a bathtube.

In Virus Tableaux Vivant the red dots – symbol of ‘sold’ in the art fairs – are sticked onto the artist’s body for criticizing the objectification of the female body, but in QUARANTINE TRILOGY they become an immediate recall to the disease that has shaken the whole world, the ‘corona virus’ and the action becomes a symbol of the healing power of love.

The intimate images of the other two scenes of the triptych, taken from spontaneous daily life at home, present Sole, the artist’s son, caught while laughing, underlining a message of positivity and hope, in a moment of extreme crisis and uncertainty.

LIUBA, Quarantine Trilogy, part II videostills

“This work was conceived during the Quarantena lock down in Milan, and it’s made with my own life, but going into universal issues.

In 2020, at the beginning of the COVID pandemic, most of the people in the world were living a long lockdown when it was not possible going out of home. For this reason the curator asked to conceive a piece made in our own home, with the materials that were available at home, to be seen on a online event.

I decided to perform in my bathtube, recalling my piece ‘Virus Tableaux Vivant’ made in 2004 at the Flash Art Event in Milan at the Galleria Placentia Arte’s exhibition hotel room. But this time my work and my message are not about the ‘virus’ of buying, like in the previous VIRUS series, but about the idea of removing ‘the virus’ from our bodies and our lives through the magic of the newborn baby love.

I also decided to include in the work scenes of my quarantene private life, fulfilled by extreme joy for the presence of my 6 months old newborn son, intimate moments of ordinary home life. Ordinary, however, is not the right word for me, because I am aware of being so blessed for this extraordinary gift of having a baby at my age (see This is the Best Artwork).