THIS IS THE BEST ARTWORK

Performance: Venice Biennale Opening, 2019

Sculpture-dress created in collaboration with Valentina Donadel

Series of big size Photos

It is with great emotion and great joy that in occasion of the Venice Biennale 2019 I was ready to tell the world that there were going to be two of us! 

To communicate this great joy and extraordinary gift to the world, I could do nothing but giving myself in the first person, as I usually do, and build a performance art piece, which was performed by surprise at the opening of Venice Biennale 2019.

Even if doing surprise works during the Biennial Openings and then making a video out of them is an artistic practice of mine since 2003, this time, I can really say THIS IS THE BEST ARTWORK!

During the performance piece I wore a sculpture-dress that I specifically designed for the occasion, made in collaboration with Valentina Donadel. The sculpture-dress covered my body in full, leaving only my belly out, with inside my beloved son. On the hem of the dress, the text THIS IS THE BEST ARTWORK was hand painted by me with fabric colours, using the brush technique and the acetate masks.

Speaking about unexpected events, the police blocked me, with the order of surrounding and hiding me. Is a naked pregnant belly something obscene that bothers people? Which is the trouble about my performance, I wondered, as the policemen surrounded me and the audience gathered together…. But then a show manager arrived to see the fact and contacted the Biennale organizers by phone, who gave permission to continue the performance, while the police could just watch it, confounded and bewildered.

There are THREE VIDEOS part of the project, made from performance shootings, from backstage photographs in the studio and from pregnancy self-portraits, accessible with a QR code from the omonimous book published by  Campanotto editore in 2023. (BUY THE BOOK HERE)

“Preparing this art project and its realization was special and complex, as is the occasion for which it was born. The idea came suddenly as a visual apparition at the beginning of my pregnancy. It was the challenge that I could not fail to do, because it was an act of love for Sole and for the world.

I started working on it several months earlier, focusing on the design of the sculpture-dress I had in mind for the performance piece: sketches, drafts, studies. Then I started searching for a pattern maker-seamstress, happily found in Valentina Donadel.

We started countless creative producing and testing sessions, on basting fabric, where we modeled together, as a work in progress, every inch of shapes and volumes of the dress, adapting it to my project and to my body. It has been wonderful working with Valentina, both precise, and creative, super meticulous and super elastic … It was a great fun and a great effort, because we have remodeled everything several times, arriving, as always, at the end of the deadline at the very last moment, finishing everything out of breath … adding to it that I had my big belly and not only got tired more easily, but I had to take care of everything I had to do for the well-being of Sole and of the pregnancy… it was a task very challenging, but we did it!

I painted the written letters on the dress completely by hand and with specific fabric colours just the day before leaving for Venice. The dress was not ready earlier because we retouched many details, even if I had foreseen that I would have needed three whole days of work for composing and painting all the letters … Oh my God, how can I make it in one day? – I said to myself – I am pregnant and I do not have an infinite physical strength and resistance! But nevertheless I spent the whole day and part of the night squatted down in the frog position, with the big belly between the knees, half lying on the floor of my studio where I had spread the dress, designing and painting the letters with precision, without staining the fabric, with the help of self hand made acetate masks, tissue and paper tape … It has been an enormous effort, but also very fun.

Yes, I managed to finish everything that night but the result was that the next day, when I had to leave for Venice, I was tired as never before and couldn’t get out of the bed! I moved the train in the late afternoon but I made an immense effort anyway for getting up and preparing the last things, and for taking the train alone with my big belly and my suitcase. I tried to bring the minimum of luggage possible but I needed everything necessary for the performance, from the spare camera to the very heavy sculpture-dress and the cape to wear on it. (…)” (LIUBA)

“LIUBA proudly displays her trophy while wearing a long white dress especially designed for the occasion, a dress with the title of the project written on its circular edge. The focus, however, is on another circle, the one showing her naked belly, the baby bump around which the whole performance revolves. LIUBA is a mother and an artist, the perfect fusion of art and life, but with that special passion for staging, for the coup de théâtre, for the performance, given in the first person and organized to perfection, the fil rouge that holds her research together. The control of the action and the attention to details, however, leave room for the unexpected, that random element which allows openness to the other: the visitor’s astonished gaze, the more-or-less appropriate comment, the intervention of the police, the incredulous reaction of those who do not know what to make of such an appearance. Is it a sculpture? Is it a person? Is it a fake belly? Was it authorized? Questions that crossed the minds of all of us, although we were already well familiar with the performance artist. LIUBA’s work plays on the edge of ambiguity, enhanced by the use of photographic and video images, amplifying the effects of her performance pieces.” (Luca Panaro)

“I can’t describe how I am feeling. It’s like a great miracle. It’s like being incredulous and grateful at the same time. It’s a deep love and an immense pleasure that expand from the inside out, radiating on everything.