Cuenca/Lauro

“This is what I have to do: study words exactly as one studies plants, animals... and then, clean them of the mould, free them from the encrustations of centuries of tradition, invent new ones, and above all discard the most rotten ones, such as: sublime, duty, tradition, abnegation, humility, soul, modesty, heart, heroism, sentiment, pity, sacrifice, resignation, so as not to use them any more.”   Goliarda Sapienza                                

HEY JOE is part of a broader project entitled OBEY that investigates the dimension of the feminine. Starting from the pivotal concept of the entire project, which is ‘disobedience’ understood as a necessary element for real self-knowledge, HEY JOE specifically questions the value of the terms rule, order and judgement, and the role they have assumed in the construction of our society. Is it possible that we have relied only on certain coordinates, giving up part of our humanity? Is it plausible to say that perhaps the time has come for a counter-trend?

​

In HEY JOE three women embark on a game that is not exactly playful.

Taking on the burden of their own choice, the three players advance by proposing hierarchical and schematic formulas. Through pictures that are linked and unlinked at the same time, they build and dissolve different modes of relationship and interaction, trying together to find an alternative to a system that does not represent them.

​

It all begins with an act of disobedience, with a small fall from Eden in which things have a predetermined order. Perhaps it is curiosity that drives us, perhaps doubt, but we choose to evade the rule and lean beyond it, beyond our assigned point.

The shift is only a few degrees and yet nothing is as it should be. What we are imbued with, passed on to us by our fathers' fathers, no longer resonates with us, and all virtues, truths and principles now betray a distortion that undermines their very nature. Here, where everything wavers and where absolutism finds no foothold, resides the feminine spirit, another dimension in which the indefinite is possibility.