SICARIUS by Ada Visser

SICARIUS by Ada Visser is the third winning project of the FUORIFUOCO call to be hosted in the exhibition space of the Mario Gromo Bibliomediateca, as part of the first edition of Fo.To. Fotografi a Torino, a city-wide collaborative project involving museums, foundations, art galleries, non-profit spaces and educational institutions, aimed at promoting exhibitions, meetings and events dedicated to photography, taking place from 3 May to 29 July, 2018.

The artist constructs a photographic narrative linked to the aesthetics of contemporary noir cinema, presenting a storyboard in which the images effectively convey the hallucinatory nature of the story being told.

The FUORIFUOCO call, promoted by the Museo Nazionale del Cinema and reserved for young photographers aged between 18 and 31, was created with the aim of hosting and disseminating young photographic production through exhibitions presented at the Mario Gromo Bibliomediateca. The interest in photographic art among new generations aligns with the Museum’s mission to enhance the theme of photography and the role of young people as active producers of culture.

SICARIUS

We are in a squalid suburban apartment, where we see a young man of about 30 enter through the door. He sits on the bed with a melancholy expression, surrounded by bags. Slowly, he takes clothes, make-up and various accessories out of the plastic bags. Dressed and made up, he takes a rope, drags a chair to the centre of the room and climbs onto it.

The following morning he is still alive, immobilised in a strange room he has never seen before. Still dazed, the man tries to get up; he turns around and sees a dark figure approaching him, and hears a female voice asking whether he remembers anything.

Still confused, the patient becomes agitated and asks where he is and why he is tied up.

The woman shakes her head and explains to the patient that on 1 July 2007 he attempted suicide, and that since then his memory has been stuck on that day.

It was morning. The teachers had organised a small party with snacks, cakes, drinks, water games, and had hired a clown to put on a short show and entertain the children. The hired clown was him, the woman explains. Annoyed by the excessive arrogance of a couple of dissatisfied parents, he took the gun from the glove compartment of his car and began shooting wildly at everyone present at the party, children and adults alike. After the shooting, he ran home in despair. A few hours later, as if nothing had happened, he went to the laundry, washed his clothes and, as soon as he returned home, attempted suicide. The police found his body hanging from that rope in time and took him to a psychiatric hospital, where he was declared mentally ill. He shot and killed, for no reason, 33 children and 16 adults.

“Welcome to the Alexandre Obregia psychiatric clinic. The patients are afraid of you and of your screams at night; they have even given you a nickname: Sicarius, the most poisonous spider in the world”.

Ada Visser was born in Rovigo on 23 January 1992. After completing secondary school, she enrolled at the Libera Accademia di Belle Arti in Brescia, where she attended the photography course and graduated in 2016. Alongside her artistic practice, she has held numerous solo and group photography exhibitions, while also working in graphic design, video, theatre and music. In 2017 she won the FUORIFUOCO call promoted by the Museo Nazionale del Cinema.