Piera's practice-based PhD thesis. South Gallery
"Video installation, as an art form, is the means by which I present aspects of my personal history and its cultural specificity. My project focuses on the conflicts of actuality and artifice encountered in tracing my experience as a migrant from the Italian island of Sardinia. Sardinia’s cultural identity is emblematic of such conflicts, given the island’s history of foreign invasions, cultural isolation, economic deprivation and constant flow of migration from the island. These conditions have made a thorough knowledge of its history and the appreciation of its cultural heritage problematic, leading Sardinians to resort to the ‘invention’ of historical documents and to find refuge in a mythical past.
In my installations (interweaving text - images – objects) I present actual/fictional, personal/collective and past/present narratives. One of the installations is dedicated to the Italian city of Genova, historically home of many migrants such as myself and well known for its racial tolerance. The salt-works and mines I refer to metaphorically and literally are actual monuments testifying to the difficult history of Sardinia. The installations project my desire to preserve personal memories, achievable only through gaining a better knowledge of the island’s realities. Each installation constitutes an autonomous unit but they can only achieve their full significance when viewed in dialogue with each other.
The artist
Piera Tomasi-Steer left her home town of Gonnosfanadiga (Sardinia) in 1967 and first migrated with her family to the industrial city of Genova where she worked and graduated in Humanities in 1978. She then began her wondrous existence in Italy, England and France while training and working in theatre, and teaching languages. A few years ago she ‘settled’ in Brighton with her husband and son. In 1997 she graduated in Critical Fine Art Practice at the Brighton University School of Art and Communications and has since had collaborative and solo exhibitions.
