Limits, boundaries and derailments​

In Matteo Attruia's research the use of words is central. The artist believes that words express an idea, a concept or an attitude that needs to be examined in order to explore the limitations conveyed by their commonly shared stereotypical use. In using a word, the artist does not seek poetic expression, connotative appeal or a sound that naturally magnifies a meaning. Nor does he aim to frame a topic, precisely define a theme or highlight the semantic significance of an expression. Instead, Attruia tends to use words to turn them around, to show the possibilities of alternative grammars and manifestly unconventional syntaxes.

In the artist's practice, words serve to reveal previously unexpressed interpretations or doubts: the artist's effort aims to highlight how reality is intrinsically contradictory and fraught with pitfalls. If, as Paul Klee stated, "art does not reproduce the visible, rather, it makes visible¹," the upturning permitted by language allows Attruia to make visible and restore the ontological divergence of reality from our usual interpretative paths. In this way, the work testifies to the potential pitfalls of a derailment, even when it speaks of a concept that by its very nature denotes a limit, an edge or a demarcation, such as the idea of ​​‘border’. 

Every border reinforces the sense of one's own identity and the identity of the ‘Other’. But equally, every border reinforces the stereotype of one's own identity and the identity of the ‘Other’, regardless of whether the border is geographical, administrative, linguistic, religious, corporeal, necessary or superfluous. Starting from this acute observation, Attruia, in his works created in Gorizia – the fruit of both relational work with different communities and interventions in public space – Attruia highlights how a border delimitation such as the ‘state border’ implies a precarious and suspended condition, as well as the fleeting sense of a ‘border state’. It is a psychological tendency towards marginality, towards a rough ‘you’ and ‘I’ that are unlikely to become a ‘we’. And, as Wittgenstein warned, "The limits of my language mean the limits of my world"².