A Corner of Home Eleonora Agostini
A Corner of Home
Eleonora Agostini
In the days that have passed and the days that are to come, we'll all be spending more time indoors. A Corner of Home collects photographic studies and new works made by artists in their immediate environments; small snapshots of the impulse to create.
Edited by Trine Stephensen and Joanna Cresswell
1. Where are you living at the moment and how has that environment shaped you creatively? Can you tell us about a favourite detail of this place and why?
I am based in London but, after the pandemic exploded in Italy, I decided to travel back to my country to be close to my family. My work is often connected to the domestic and the dynamics of the family. My parents’ house, with all its obstacles and possibilities, has always been a very rich source of inspiration for me. I’ve been living somewhere else for ten years and coming back to this place has definitely become part of my process of working, a necessary step to move forward by looking back. I’m using this time while I’m here to slow everything down, to reflect on my work and the decisions I have been making in the past few months. The first couple of weeks I found it really hard to focus on anything and the pressure of being productive left me with no energy to invest. Now I’m taking some photographs, reading, writing, drawing and doing all those things I usually don’t have much time for. I am cooking a lot, going for walks in the fields next to the house, getting through my long movies watchlist, dancing in my room, organizing my computer and my hard drives. My favorite place in the house is the garden. The garden is often very quiet and sunny, and right now I find it very reassuring and peaceful to observe my neighbours engaging with their daily tasks, walk barefoot and lay on the grass. I feel very lucky to be able to have access to an outdoor space.
2. How have you looked at the materials of home differently in the past weeks? Are there parts of it that have revealed themselves to you in new ways?
Since I have been here, I have been pinning down and sketching ideas, some of them related to the situation we are living in collectively. I am interested in the house as a space where intimacy and claustrophobia exist simultaneously. I started exploring this in my project A Blurry Aftertaste in 2018, but new perspectives are taking shape. The borders of the home are now more relevant than ever to me, they represent a more severe separation between people but also a suggestion of the strong feeling to overcome it. While in the past I used photography to document household objects and staged activities performed by my family members, I am now focusing on my own relationship with the house and on how my body and my mind act in this space of confinement. I have been thinking about the idea of hiding, both in a physical and psychological way.
3. Tell us about how you’ve been using photography lately? What are you making or putting in front of the lens?
Before the lockdown started, I was working with collages by using existing materials from the darkroom in my studio. The work develops around concepts of rituals, labour, and the photographic process. All that work is in London and, for this reason, is on hold. Since I have been in Italy, I have been following some self-given instructions to make work and I have invented some new games to keep being productive and engaged with my practice. Some of them are set in the garden and include some interventions that can only exist within a temporary restricted space. I am also focusing on my movements around the house and tracking them with drawings and pieces of writing. I have been photographing repeatedly the small details, corners and spaces that define my daily routine, focusing on the small changes that can occur within the everyday.
