Nora Schultz – Figurazione/substituzione

Nora Schultz exhibition opens Pavillon, a new non-profit contemporary art project in Lucca.

In her new show the artist recovers information on emigration from Lucca  between the 18th and the 20th century. This phenomenon saw the spread of plaster craft sculptures, self-produced by the so called figurinai selling them along the street all over the world.
The production of plaster figurines included small size copies of ancient and modern statues, medallions, busts of emperors and politicians, religious figures, various animals and much more – from this point these Italian migrants were known as Image Sellers or Gipskatter. These figurines were placed on pegs attached to a table, or galera as it was called, and carried on their head as they travelled from place to place selling their merchandise.

Nora Schultz uses heterogeneous materials that are found or confiscated, as she writes, in the different contexts in which she operates. Within essential post-minimalist installations, the decontextualized object becomes a sort of enigmatic and uncertain witness of its own history, meanwhile assuming allegorical or allusive meanings.