Mamma Mia Museum
A project that stems from a daughter’s observation of certain behaviours of her mother affected by Alzheimer’s disease .
The sharing of these images on social media, under the name Mamma Mia Museum, highlights the need to share these fragilities with the outside world. Through the transformative power of art, they acquire visibility and a new form.
The displacement of objects, the combination of seemingly distant elements, and other strange juxtapositions are captured with quick and furtive photographs, reflecting the need to transform and interpret these apparitions as creative and poetic processes rather than errors.
Working in the contemporary art world, the author of this project found herself forced, at the beginning, to bring her mother to “work,” including meetings, exhibition openings, and installations,trying to remain somehow connected to her profession. She even started to observe her mother’s gestures and eccentricities from the same point of view she used to interpret art works, rediscovering in her mother’s casual gestures the same poetic obsessions that drives artists to creation.
Mammia Mia Museum is therefore a series of photographs that sometimes show her mother at exhibitions and museums, and other domestic moments in which certain movements of objects seem to create works of art.
The “art family” surrounding the author immediately recognized the potential of these images, inspiring the creation of a dedicated artistic project.
The Mamma Mia Museum inscription is a Poetrick by artist Stefano Calligaro, also transformed into a ceramic plaque to hang outside the front door, like the entrance to a real museum.
Each image is given a title, a metaphor of the impossible challenges that caregivers are forced to face every day.
Since her mother’s illness began in 2020, Becagli has had to balance work and caregiving, feeling the full weight of a family caregiver, including bureaucracy, family, and the practicalities of life. She has no time for private life. What’s left is dedicated to work, to maintain an income and a foothold in reality.
Serena Becagli, (Florence, 1973), lives and works in Signa (FI). She holds a degree in Phenomenology of Styles from the DAMS (University of Bologna) and works in the promotion, production, curation, and communication of exhibitions and cultural events, as well as in the drafting and coordination of editorial projects, collaborating with various organizations, galleries, museums, and independent spaces.
Opening Thursday, April 2nd, 5pm – 8pm
From April 2 to April 24th
LdM Gallery, Via de’Pucci, 4 Florence
Curated by: Špela Zidar
Gallery coordinator: Špela Zidar
Gallery intern: Alexandria Swanson, Isabella Walejko
About LdM Gallery
The LdM Gallery is a project by Istituto Lorenzo de’ Medici, an interdisciplinary space where academic research and artistic experimentation meet within a professional setting.