ANYTHING TO SAY?
ABOUT
Stand up when everyone else is seated. Imagining new worlds and drawing trajectories that can also correct reality is certainly the role of artists. Collecting the spirit of the time and making it visible. Sometimes, certain phenomena without art would remain hidden, as reality is a complex place to decipher. Like that, Art arises from that need to imagine the world in a different way from how it is presented.
As an artist I have the duty to defend freedom of speech and the right of knowledge and that is why I have created an empty chair to raise ourselves, to change perspective, to stand taller and look at what we can’t see or try to hide.
Anything to say? an itinerant bronze monument dedicated to freedom of expression which, unlike those set in public squares, on a pedestal, rests on the ground and moves. The work depicts three icons of our contemporaneity, Julian Assange, Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden, standing on three chairs, who through the WikiLeaks platform revealed war crimes and abuse of human rights, making governments around the world tremble.
The sculptural group has a missing piece, the 4th chair which is completed when people stand up on it and take a position. The work had a great media response, involving people around the world, which is why it continues its unstoppable journey today. Anything to say? has since 2015 been in the squares of 14 European capitals, including Berlin to Paris, Geneva, Strasbourg, Dresden, Belgrade, Rome, and Brussels.
It is up to us to do our part because only Art and Culture create conscience and critical sense.This sculpture wants to be our voice in support of their courage in defense of the truth, an alarm bell for each of us because at risk is freedom of speech and of the press, transparency, knowledge and investigative journalism, all chapters that make up the book of our life and not just that of Assange, Manning and Snowden and many others have taught us that sometimes sacrifice is the highest form of freedom. Being informed is an act of resistance and it gives us the possibility to choose where we want to be and above all with whom. What I hope is that this work continues to gowhere politics and justice fail.
DAVIDE DORMINO BIOGRAPHY
His work is expressed in scuplture and drawing. He seeks new forms by favouring old-fashioned systems for working on materials such as marble, bronze and iron. In his public artworks, he is concerned with a search for monumentality like in Poltergeist, 2019, Naviganti_Monument to imagination, 2017, Atlante, 2019. The entirety of his artistic research is entrusted to the grandeur of a creative process rooted in fundamental human issues. He has created works of Public Art in Italy and abroad, Breath, 2001 commissioned by the United Nations, permanent in North Lawn of the U.N. Building in New York.
“Anithing to say?” An itinerant sculpture dedicated to the courage and freedom of expression that began its journey from Berlin (Alexanderplatz) on 1 May 2015 and later the work moved to Dresden (Theatrerplatz, Ostrale), Geneva (Place des Nations), Paris (Place Georges Pompidou), Strasbourg(Place Klèber), Tours (Gare de Tours), Perugia ( Piazza IV Novembre), Belgrade (Dev9t Festival), Ptuj-Slovenia (Art Stay Festival), Roma (p.le Aldo Moro), Spoleto (Piazza Campello), Berlin (Brandenburger Tor), Bruxelles (Place de la Monnaie), Cologne (Köln Cathedral).
For this work he received the 2016 Prix Èthique from the French organization AntiCor.
