A Corner of Home Olimpia Piccolo
A Corner of Home
Olimpia Piccolo
Published 1 April, 2020
In the days that have passed and the days that are to come, we'll all be spending more time indoors. A Corner of Home collects photographic studies and new works made by artists in their immediate environments; small snapshots of the impulse to create.
Edited by Trine Stephensen and Joanna Cresswell
1. Where are you living at the moment and how has that environment shaped you creatively? Can you tell us about a favourite detail of this place and why?
I moved back to Rome in July after graduating from Bristol,Uk. It has been an interesting period of transition from my 3 years of uni life back in the Uk to here. Rome is a breathtaking place and I'm really lucky to have lived here most of my life. It's history and beauty sucks you in in an instant and it's easy to get lost in the midst of it. Beautiful architecture, friendly people and cristal blue skies, what’s not to love! I find Italy and especially Rome most inspiring places to be creatively. My photography has a very strong Italian mark to it, probably also with a little twist. Sometimes I do need distance myself after a while to be able to take in the environment with fresh eyes.
2. How have you looked at the materials of home differently in the past weeks? Are there parts of it that have revealed themselves to you in new ways?
It's been a very surreal period here in Italy. Everything has changed so rapidly, but at the same time everything has stopped as well. No one is moving, the streets are deserted, even the apartments are quiet. The house has slowly been taken over by the effects of the virus forcing my parents and I to be completely isolated from each other. Even inside I need to wear a mask as a precaution for my elderly parents. We are only able to leave the house to do the food shopping and to take out the dog, and thankfully we have one.
3. Tell us about how you’ve been using photography lately? What are you making or putting in front of the lens?
Being confined to my bedroom has made me more aware of the sudden changes around the house. The changes are mostly behavioural, so the subtleties of a mask hanging from a piece of furniture or latex gloves hung to dry become quite loud to the eye. I have been documenting non-staged still lifes around the house as a way of observing how much our house is being changed by this invisible phenomenon and I have also been taking the opportunity to get out of the house by taking out the dog. I could not waste the opportunity of documenting such a beautiful city without tourism invading it. Since I live in the city centre I want to stop at all the most famous tourist attractions and photograph only my boyfriend and my dog, in order to really get a sense of the absurdity and vastness of the empty spaces.
