Gabriele de Vietri uses performance, video, photography and text to investigate issues such as identity formation and human behavioural patterns on the backdrop of wider social, cultural and philosophical implications. In small interactive experiments involving both actors and spectators, she unravels the conventional structures that underlie human relationships. Whether turning the daily news into song lyrics for musical performances (Hark!, 2009), drafting Relationship Contracts (2004), posting catchphrases from self-help books on the furniture in a business office (Announcements/Commandments, 2005), or interviewing children from various backgrounds on existential questions (What Is Beauty? and How Do We Live Together?, both 2009), De Vietri’s work highlights the fact that we are undergoing an life-long learning process which confronts us with continuous changes. De Vietri’s art, which emphasises the importance of everyday events or small gestures and thus creates various levels of identification, is imbued with a refreshingly light-hearted view on the world, in the face of which pessimism is bound to capitulate.
