Francesca Floris – The World of Las – curated by Flavio De Bernardinis – 2019 May 11th / June 8th – Opening May 11th from 6:00 pm to 20:30 pm

Is the lens of the camera a window, or a mirror? And the mirror, in any case, can it also be a camera? And finally, what is seen, in both cases, is shown, or reflected? The photographic installations of Francesca Floris are inscribed within this conceptual field, which, in the electronic age, or rather the season of indistinct multiplication of images without support, constitutes the heart of the contemporary social and anthropological scene.

Combined with the reflection motif, the theme of the body. Perceivable as an eternally delayed presence in the game of refractions, the body is confirmed as a strong and inescapable presence.

The art of Francesca Floris thus poses the cardinal problem: in the labyrinth of reflections, is the image a support of the body, or does the body, with its tender and merciless availability, constitute, here and now, the support of the image?

It is up to the viewer to formulate a hypothesis, if not decisive, at least participatory, of a figurative and sensorial project, which touches, in depth and on the surface, the key theme of contemporary culture, a social and also a political theme, that is the fragile question, full-bodied and reflected, though still unresolved, of identity. (Flavio De Bernardinis)

The World of Las was born from the desire to describe a platonic love. The story is about a woman who is projected into the fantasies of the person who loves her. These imaginary places are the only place where she enjoys the love of which she is the object. To represent this situation, I chose to really project the protagonist of this project into the scenarios that represent the imagination of the narrator. The idea was, from the beginning, to “host” the woman in these fantasies, which in the photographs appear as concrete and tangible places, while she appears as a projection, an apparition, something distant and ghostly. The viewer then moves into the mind of the person who loves. (Francesca Floris)

The exhibition is structured in four parts. The first stage of the exhibition is composed of 10 illustrations (one for each chapter of the story), in 40 x 60 cm format, accompanied by a brief quote from the chapter of the story that each represents.

The illustrations are followed by an exhibition of 10 photographs, in 60 x 90 cm format.

The third stage of the journey consists of a limited space, where a backstage video is shown that shows the functioning of the mechanism and the process of making the photographs.

Finally, visitors access a specially lit space, inside which the mechanism with which the photographs were taken is exposed and where they, after learning how it works, can look at each other and photograph themselves inside an interactive environment recreated to show its function and to allow guests to immerse themselves, some in the eyes of the narrator, some in the shoes of the photographed woman.

Francesca Floris was born in Oristano on April 6th 1992. She received her classical high school diploma in 2011, in Sassari. She graduated from Brunel University in London in 2014. In England she joined the art collective Ad Libitum Films, with which she made numerous short films, a web series and her first feature film, the documentary Isole. She moved to the United States in 2014 to pursue a master’s degree. She started working as a photographer at the end of 2015. Since then she has presented two personal exhibitions (Olympus 50 and Il palco bianco) and taken part in two group exhibitions. She attended the Producing course at the “Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia” in Rome in the 2016-2018 three-year period. At the moment she is graduating in Anthropology at the University of Siena.

The World of Las is her second project of staged photography. The first one was Il palco bianco (2017).