curated by Giada Peterle and Giovanni Donadelli
opening Thursday 3 October, 6:30 pm
Museo di Geografia, Padova

In the IGM maps, the sea appears as a silent expanse, lacking the detailed attention with which the maps portray the land. With her work Displacement, Laura Pugno invites us to a "displacement" that redirects our gaze onto that seemingly empty expanse, evoking, from the Italian coasts, the significance of waters in the Anthropocene. Here, the viewer's movement, shifting in front of the map, allows the changing shadows of an uncharted presence to emerge. What finds its place in Pugno's maps are not the silvery reflections of waves on water, but fragments of plastic, resurfaced bodies, a consequence of human pollution, now accumulating in tons even along our beaches.

In Pugno's work, the IGM map remains seemingly intact, but its integrity is eroded by overlaying the map on the plastic debris collected from beaches, which is used as an agent in this kind of abrasive frottage. The changing forms inhabiting the seas in Pugno's works are sometimes small scratches, other times they trace recognizable outlines of everyday objects—a bottle cap, a stick, a net. With this gesture, Displacement questions a void in the IGM cartography, the absence of new aquatic geographies made of microplastics and waste islands, and proposes a new poetic and changing symbolism. The flag is thus an invitation to move beyond the map and bring it to life, by planting a signal in real space.

Displacement is a process that involves the substitution of one element with another. Displacement is also a condition that implies movement, a distance from a reference point, and the search for a new balance. Displacement is the drift of plastics moving through currents; eroded by wave action, they are worn down and transformed until they become fragments, tiny grains of sand. In Pugno's work, Displacement represents a new cartographic symbolism that comes to life only through the movement of those who, looking at the map, have the courage to find themselves disoriented.

Laura Pugno, Displacement, 2024, abraded IGM map, multicolor PVC film, 50x60 cm, © photo by Nadia Pugliese