Second Chances is a project of ongoing research and production that began in 2019 (pre-pandemic) and is scheduled to be completed at the end of 2022. This project explores what it means to be human in a modern throw-away culture, it asks us to evaluate how we with our collective choices shape the cultural values that in turn shape us. It challenges us to take the raw material of everyday life and transform things that have no value into a more beautiful present and future. It reminds us that we always have second chances, and that we can create the life that we want.

Project

This project was a culmination of two years of research and production of a series of sculptures that use recycled material and the topic of environmental sustainability as a language to speak about our cultural values. The sculptures themselves are made of two important materials: cardboard that was abandoned and recovered from the street and precious hours of my life which are evident in the painstaking process used to construct these works. Both are invaluable, in opposite ways. In this series the material takes the form of female bodies full of emotion, highly sensual but at the same time always in positions of strength, power, and confidence. The art itself is beautiful and easily appreciated by everyone (even children). It also creates a surprising moment when the viewer realizes that the sculptures are made of cardboard, because it’s unusual to see this material take on such an organic form. But under the surface of these works, the art asks the viewer to reflect on deeper themes collective for the project and individually for each piece.

Theme

We live in an age of social media and a disposable culture, where the real value of everything we touch on a daily basis is disappearing and being substituted by something superficial, fake, that doesn’t last and doesn’t fill us with satisfaction. In this context we lose authenticity, quality, real relationships with people, the environment and the culture around us. This modern culture also rewards pop art that can pull thousands of likes on instagram but then disappears and is forgotten, instead of art that derives from a long, slow process of study and production. 

In this culture, we pollute our environment with physical waste (like the boxes of Amazon), our minds with banal ideas (like TikTok and memes), and our hearts with anxiety (like the influencer culture of Instagram). The culture forms our values in thousands of subtle ways. And also our values in turn form the culture in which we swim. Participating in this endless circle, we need to be aware of our role in the formation of culture (with every small choice) and realize how our choices themselves are influenced by our culture.

The Material

The boxes used for the initial sculptures (1 and 2) were saved from Chad's move from San Francisco to Italy in 2017. The boxes for the rest of the sculptures were recovered from the streets of Bologna. The idea behind this project is to take material that is abundant and abandoned in our culture, like the boxes of Amazon, that are without value, thrown away on the streets for recycling every Tuesday, and with attention and creativity, create something beautiful. Every piece of art exists and communicates its own story, independently of the project’s broader theme, but they are all connected with the same material that was chosen for this project and all the meaning behind. Every piece asks us to think about how we participate in our culture, with our daily choices, in a way that reinforces values to create a world that is more beautiful, more sustainable, more long lasting, more attentive to the humanity of those around us. How can we give our attention to the things that are important in this particular moment of history which we are constructing, to the people, to the relationships, to the ideas and habits that have real value.