Siamo noi che piano piano si sparisce

2022 | former slaughterhouse, Prato
300cm x 11cm x 13cm

engraved used meat hooks

curated by Sara Piedipalumbo and Irene Tempestini

​Photo credits: Marinza Arienzale, Beatrice Caruso, Sara Piedipalumbo, Irene Tempestini.

“The suggestion aroused by the hoist, from which hung the carcasses of the animals, gave rise to the genesis of the site-specific work: each hook that makes up the installation shows sparks of memories about the former slaughterhouse. The artist has collected testimonies and suggestions about the place, interviewing some citizens of Prato who have lived and attended. The choice to use second-hand hooks recovered from active butchers adds further interconnections, thus creating the two chains of stories and memories that survive the ephemeral lives of people and animals.”

Thanks to Franchino, Gianni, Raffaello, Urano and Vittoria for sharing their memories:
“They seemed to me to be flesh surgeons, those who called “ammazzini”, who held knives from the belt. They are beautiful memories of youth”
“There were wagons, there were still hooks to hang cattle to be slaughtered, there was a certain aura of charm of a former job”
“Because for us who were born and who live inside the walls the slaughterhouses are already outside” 
“It was an area with also a duty, a weight of the trucks that stopped there to load the cattle”
“A death space, where they slaughtered animals and gassed stray dogs”
“It’s a place of pain, and the energy you have to put in to repair all the pain there has been, of animals, is so great that maybe you can’t bear it” 
“A handshake was enough for a contract. They were real people, people of other times”
“Everything remained the same. These remain, we’re the ones who are slowly disappearing”
“People were shouting in the market, you could hear it from the outside when someone was arriving”
“You can’t do it now, but back in the day, when I went in to work in ’82, if it was convenient: if you’d finished a box of chickens, you’d go to slaughterhouses”
“A good memory, because it was really tight, you know? I mean, all the people knew each other in the end”
“I saw once all these lambs while they were sticking -can I say it? – the knife in their throat..that made me a little ‘effect'” 
“It was a thing where we young people of that time used to go and check what was happening”
“These tiles if you throw a hook over they sparks”
“It reminds me of youth”

Installation created for the collective exhibition Extreme Elastic, curated by Estuario Project Space, at Officina Giovani- Ex macelli.