Drawings
black technical pen on cardboard (ongoing series)
different dimensions
2012 – ongoing
Stefano Romano & Eri Çobo
The project starts from the original meaning of the word, that of Thomas More’s book (1516), i.e. of a totally invented place where life only flows positively, and the very place names of the Land of Utopia contain their own non-existence.
We ask several people to draw a map of the area they love most, of the city they love most. Each person will then draw a part of a city. Once we have all the maps, we join them together in a harmonious way so as to develop a single island each time (the island of utopia, because it was born out of people’s love for those places).
By asking people to draw the area of the city they love most, we allow an itinerary of emotions to surface: it is an invitation to a psycho-geographical journey. At the same time, the emotional thrust of this series of beloved spaces loses its high individual and personal character, because we re-trace the drawings in a way that is ultimately visually and formally equivalent. It is a kind of emotional appropriation.
