Condo SP

Amalia Pica uses sculpture, performance, installation and photography to explore the nuances of communication. Central to Pica’s work is the problem of communication, which she explores by setting everyday objects alongside obsolete technologies such as shutter telegraphs, slide projectors, and 16 mm film. Yet while her interest is in language, and in the mechanisms by which communication is attempted, most of her projects are silent. She com- pensates for this apparent lack by adding texts that elucidate the missing parts. Pica highlights the significance of listening and interpretation in installations. The artist’s use of antiquated technologies thus emphasizes the ironic possibilities for miscommunication between artist and spectator. Her work can seem reticent at first, hinging as it does on the impossibility of perfect rapport, it is never without humor. Aware that her ideas can never survive the process of realization entirely intact, Pica revels in their inevitable mutation and creates new systems of discourse that brim with fractured syntax, encrypted se- mantics, and gleeful semiotics.