Artist: Gianni Pisani
Condensed Biography: Initially a painter, began making performances in the early 1970s. He has been Director of the Fine Arts Academy of Naples since 1984.
Location: Naples, Italy
Artwork#1: Each Morning Before Going Out (1973)
Genre: photography
Description: “In the morning after a shower, I rewind the umbilical cord on my abdomen (…it is taken from the intestine of a cow, it is that kind of tubular vellum used by butchers to make sausages; I tied it at one end and then I inflated it with a bicycle pump). I arrange their skein under my shirt; as I am buttoning it, I completely conceal the inconvenience that belongs to me. I hide it from the others with my bourgeois clothes which make me no different than the others; I compress it under my daily appearances and go among people.”
Quote: “The idea of an umbilical cord is tied to my preceding work, from the representation of my suicide to guns, from my old paintings or more decent drawings to the rocking chair or to the destruction of my coffin…Perhaps the story of the umbilical cord is the return towards life, it is like a need to attach oneself to something, it is the searching for a father-mother-son tie…the others stay away from it, but these are the fundamental ties…”
Both quotations from the Artist’s statement, 1979 found in Amelia Jones, Tracey Warr “The Artist’s Body”, Phaidon Press, New York 2006.
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