Global Perspective
PORTRAIT OF IAIA FILIBERTI
By MarinaMojana
Pepita, the Maid of the NewMillennium
I talian and milanese, the versatile artist Iaia Filiberti ranges between installations, illustration and video art in all of which her stylistic identity always rings true: refinement, elegance and an essentiality of representation, combined with a subtle vein of irony. The artist lucidly creates icons of contemporaneity, working on diverse themes reinterpreted from an intimate point of view that is never politically correct and necessarily contrary to any cliché. The work with which the artist’s name is most readily associated is Pepita, a character conceived in 2001. Since then, numerous events have permitted Pepita to express herself in the world of art with that curious, fearless and sharp attitude of hers. Pepita, the anti-Barbie, has one large, wide-open eye and one that is very small and frightened. Within this representation we can see the dichotomy of life and feeling. That immense, virgin eye, the eye of the child, contains within itself its own great beauty and innocence. Should it persist in an older person it may lead them to appear foolish given all the obstacles over which they may trip. This is the master eye, which may err in its tireless attempt to see beyond. In the surreal, however, there are marvels to be found! The smaller eye, instead belongs to the real, the tangible. It is not true that these two gazes are always in opposition. When, in a character, reason and vision find an equilibrium, they become strong suits of its vision: it is as if within Pepita a perfect synthesis of heart and mind is created. The scenarios in which Pepita lives out her adventures develop
PEPITAARMY
in broad sequences, frequently associated with mythology or with history, while at the same time being perfectly contemporary in that they are born out of observations of reality. Only later do they become scripts. There is the abandoned Pepita, the Pepita dissatisfied with herself who wants to “rebuild her body” and who is
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