Stilleven

This installation draws inspiration from the photo Stilleven #01 and transforms the closet in the image into a viewing device through which it is possible to see oneself reflected in the corn-filled room, as if the mirror in the original scene had incorporated the expanse of corn into itself. Created in response to the Wunderkammer-themed invitation for the Italian Pavilion at the 56th Venice Biennale, the work proposes a poor and humble version of it, transforming familiar memory into a topos of art history, such as that of the still life. Migliora celebrates the tradition of drying corn, which is central to the peasant culture from which it comes, and elevates it to a precious treasure on par with the relics of the Renaissance wunderkammer. In the external part of the Stilleven installation, we see a series of optical systems embedded in the body of the cabinet that acts as a threshold to the expanse of cobs. The holes are optical chambers that produce a perspective effect when observing photographic prints from 1993, depicting other scenes from the room used by the artist’s father for drying corn. Instead, the rectangular apertures are a zogroscope and a camera obscura—both instruments predating cinema—that show the reflected and reversed image of the installation, suggesting the illusory nature of the viewer’s perception.