As you may know already, among my projects there is the one dedicated to the exchange with foreign artisans and one of the cities I am most attached to is Morocco. I had studied there many years ago and have kept visiting during these years to keep in touch with all the craftsmen and beautiful people I met.
In Morocco, brass is one of the most important and used materials, so I wanted to learn to shape it and chisel it. I participated in some chiseling classes and also collaborated very closely with a local artisan, who was so kind to teach me some tricks.
These experiences have been amazing and to link them to my own life, I created a series of hand-chiseled brass brooches called ‘Residenti’.
Residenti refers to the resident population of Venice and it is a provocative name that helped me, through art, in transforming a fear into something creative. It is common knowledge that due to mass tourism the population of Venice keeps decreasing year after year. Around the city there many signs, designed as our nizioleti, with the number 49.999, which aimed at denouncing the fact that we are currently less than 50.000 inhabitants. Meaning that Venice has been transformed from a city to a town.
Since the first sign was exposed to the public, the trend has gotten worse and now we are less than 48 thousand residents… and I am afraid that this trend will continue (in fact, now, around the city there are other signs reporting ‘wanted: a mayor that lives in Venice’ and ‘Wanted landlords with a hand on their heart and not only on their wallet’).
With all this in mind, I started asking myself who will be the resident population of Venice in 10/20/30 years. If buying or renting a house will become ever more impossible for couples and families, what will remain of Venice? Who will be called Venetian? And my sarcastic answer was… the creatures of the lagoon, the fish, mollusks and birds that inhabit our environment, the monuments and architectures that contributed to making Venice so beautiful and famous, and -of course- the gondolas.
My aim is to create greater awareness about the situation and help visitors understand how delicate the city is and that there is a better way to travel and support local activities. Venice and Venetians love foreigners and we are happy to welcome people from all over the world, it is part of our culture and tradition. Yet, mass tourism has made traveling a much faster and less interesting activity, so what happens is that many tourists don’t get to feel and understand the city and never encounter a local.
This way of traveling is a huge loss not only for us, but also for the tourists. The sense of traveling is to learn about other lifestyles and traditions, but if these are hidden and boycotted by the Big Industries, no one wins. Sorry if I am repetitive, but as an artisan I really want to return to the name and the objects referred to as ‘souvenir’ their original importance. Once upon a time, a souvenir was a special object made by a local craftsman that a traveler would buy to have a heartfelt and valuable memory of their journey, whereas today it is often associated to cheap and low quality objects made in far away factories.
The truth is that in Venice there are plenty of creative and talented artists and I truly believe we should value them. So… with this collection of brass brooches, I hope to give a little contribution in making visitors feel the so called ‘venezianità’ a little more, in a joyful and fun way, through a handmade object with quality materials.
Online and in my workshop in Cannaregio, you will find a wide range of brass lagoon creatures, like sardines, octopuses, crabs, pigeons, gondolas and monuments like the Rialto Bridge and more. I hope you will like them and please, do let me know what you think about this project.
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Thank you for reading me.
Warm regars,
Michela Bortolozzi