BABAIST BRACELETS
While working on the Retablo catalog, inserting photographs of the works and their respective titles, certain images happen to end up above the wrong titles.
They never seem wrong; they look right. They’re just something else now, but beautiful, each item with its own perfect sense.
There’s no such thing as a coincidence, I think, like a mantra, in front of each new combination.
When curator Maria Livia Brunelli invited twelve people – friends and collectors – to dinner at her home gallery in Porto Cervo, where my Retablos are on display, I decided to print twelve titles of my works on as many leather bracelets. Titles, or the concepts behind the works, the things I believe in: each of the guests received a title at random, as happened with the images of the Retablos.
But knowing Maria Livia’s exuberance, I thought it better to make a few more bracelets, in case someone joined in at the last minute. I made 17.
At the dinner it was me plus 17 people (there’s no such thing as a coincidence). So after dinner everyone took their bracelet without looking.
And, inevitably, everyone took their own.
Each bracelet spoke precisely to the person who chose it. Titles came as blessings to the participants in the experiment.
Blessings are needed. Our universe is flush with criticism and stingy with blessings.
So I continue to make the bracelets and have them travel the world, having people take them without choosing them, like an oracle, a random blessing. Do coincidences exist?
