Alice Arisu: Whose Culture is This?

Alice Arisu is a 24 year old artist based in Milan. Her work leans on the powerful ability to communicate with the psychological methods advertising – she is studying Theories and Methods for Communication at the University of Milan – so Arisu uses slogans, in effective, passive protest, to articulate our societal shortcomings – namely the identity of women in the multi-fragmented, exploitive landscape of mainstream media.

I was interested in Arisu’s latest series, entitled Who Culture Is This?, which is so apropo to our current zeitgeist, so I asked her what her thoughts were behind this project. Here is what she had to say:

In my previous project, “Sin Cara” (“Faceless” in Spanish, which was created for an exhibition in Madrid), the main idea was to suggest how universal female condition could be by hiding or erasing their faces: women may lose their identity for many different, oppressive influences. The “Whose Culture is This?” series shares the same sentiment, but now I am using black and white photography which I used to love at the very beginning of my “ career”, with its peculiar light and an attempt to lack in perspective. I fuse it with the use of written word, which is inspired by advertisements, but there’s no slogan, just sharp sentences and questions, which I hope will lead to reflection as unique way of release.

www.alicearisu.com