Fabric of the Universe
While playful and clearly tongue-in-cheek, Anna Carluccio’s artworks are multilayered and complex in concept. Both her installations and two-dimensional works present a self-aware corniness on the surface, but reveal an underlying seriousness. Fabric of the Universe investigates utopian ideologies and universal logic, exploring the tensions between freedom and control, personally and universally.
In the digital prints, scrunchies (fabric-covered elastic hair ties) are formed by collages of constructivist textiles, digital images of the cosmos and new-age aesthetics sourced from the internet. The universe is in a sense a fabric, as it expands and contracts, like the elastic band of a scrunchie. Placed upon background images of the universe, these scrunchies refer to black holes. The collages include close-ups of a mouth (or possibly other bodily orifices), which can also form the shape of a hole. The installation works actually invite audience participation with literal cut out face-in-holes. The references to black holes inherently suggest the inability to escape from a powerful vortex, and the many references to holes in general—both physical and figurative—indicate something empty and hollow, potentially; something that needs to be filled because something or someone is no longer there.
Carluccio’s work invites a comparison between uniformity and utopianism through Russian Constructivism and new-age aesthetics. Following the Russian Revolution of 1917, the use of constructivist textiles in everyday dress was one element used in order to break from the past. Strongly rejecting traditions and disregarding pre-existing fashion and bourgeois methods of making art, Russian constructivists embraced geometric abstraction as their visual language. The aim was to bring utopian ideologies into everyday living through the visual reinforcement of textile clothing.1 Comparatively, the cosmos aesthetic is an example of many